Carlos Uzcategui’s legal journey to the U.S. put the Venezuelan on a collision course with an ‘unprecedented’ deportation plan
On March 15, Carlos Uzcategui Vielma made a phone call from an immigration detention center in Texas to his partner, Gabriela Mora Méndez, at their home in Venezuela. He told her that he thought he would be deported home to Venezuela that day. This was good news—Carlos had been in immigration detention for more than three months.
But Uzcategui never arrived. It wasn’t until Mora recognized Uzcategui in images circulating on social media, showing men with shaved heads surrounded by armed guards, that she realized he was being held in El Salvador’s maximum-security prison.