Venezuelan Professional Goalkeeper Deported to El Salvador Prison, Stunning Family Back Home

DHS, in a statement, stands by the rendition to a prison known for torture and barbaric conditions.

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Mar 20, 2025

The Trump administration deported a Venezuelan professional soccer player, a youth soccer coach with no criminal record, to an El Salvadoran prison known for torture and abusive conditions, according an affidavit filed with the court and confirmed by a family member’s post on Facebook in Venezuela.

The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been renditioned to El Salvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. “We were surprised to see him in the videos being released on social media of those deported to El Salvador,” his uncle, Jair Barrios, said in a Facebook post in Spanish. “We immediately contacted the lawyer because no more information about him was appearing on the ICE locator.”

Reyes Barrios, who previously was a keeper for the Perijaneros Fútbol Club in the state of Zulia, was due for a hearing on April 17, 2025. He had been applying for political asylum, a case he had a plausible chance to win given his backstory. Reyes Barrios was not an economic migrant, but he had participated in two marches against the government of Nicolás Maduro in the context of 2024’s controversial presidential election. The United States has long pressured the Maduro government—which the U.S. does not officially recognize—to hold free and fair elections. The U.S. responded angrily when Venezuela’s Supreme Court, aligned with Maduro, kicked his leading opponent off the ballot, and multiple demonstrations throughout the country were held.

According to his attorney, Reyes Barrios marched in two demonstrations, one in February and one in March 2024, and was abducted off the street and taken to government security forces to an undisclosed location, where he was tortured, facing electrocution and suffocation.

Barrios said that his nephew left Venezuela in March, after his torture. In October 2023, the U.S. had offered Temporary Protective Status to Venezuelans in the United States, arguing that government repression in the country meant it was unsafe to return. “He spent several months working in Mexico waiting for his CBP One appointment,” Jair Barrios said. “In September of the same year, exactly on the 1st, he had his appointment to enter the United States.”

At his appointment, Barrios said, “he was detained under investigation for ‘suspicious tattoos’—that they say are related to Tren de Aragua.” Reyes Barrios’s detention began under the Biden administration.

The controversial Venezuelan gang uses a crown as part of its tattoos, and Reyes Barrios had a crown tattoo. According to his uncle, the tattoo was soccer-related. “It should be noted that Jerce is a soccer player, and most of his tattoos are related to his love for soccer and his family. For example, he has a crown on top of a soccer ball. This crown is associated with the Tren de Aragua criminal group. He found out about this when he was already detained in the U.S.”

His attorney, Linette Tobin, filed an affidavit with the court, saying the explanation for the crown is straightforward: It is the logo of Real Madrid, his favorite football club. According to his uncle, an attorney in the United States contacted the family and asked for reams of documentation to support his case, which the family sent to the attorney, including an affidavit from the tattoo artist. Tobin, in the affidavit, said Venezuelan records made clear Reyes Barrios had no criminal background and no gang ties and was indeed seeking genuine political asylum.

Tobin obtained the affidavit from the tattoo artist attesting to the soccer-related nature of the tattoo and submitted multiple other examples of similar tattoos on non-gang members. The evidence, Tobin affirmed, was enough to move Reyes Barrios out of maximum security on March 10 or March 11, yet he was deported just days later.

According to Tobin, the U.S. also claimed he was a gangster based on a social media post in which he was making a hand gesture. That gesture is simply “I love you” in sign language and often means, simply, “Rock and Roll,” Tobin said. That the U.S. only referenced a single social media post—of innocent hand gestures—suggests they found nothing incriminating whatsoever.

Reyes Barrios never got a chance to make his case, however, as he was deported to El Salvador ahead of his scheduled April 17 hearing. By then, he had spent five and a half months in American detention. It is unclear whether Reyes Barrios is still alive.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the Trump administration is standing by the deportation. “Jerce Reyes Barrios was not only in the United States illegally, but he has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TdA gang membership,” she told Drop Site. “His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TdA gang. That all said, DHS intelligence assessments go beyond a single tattoo and we are confident in our findings.”