Bulwark Takes - LGBTQ Asylum Seeker Detained By ICE and “Disappeared”

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by immigration lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski to discuss her client, a LGBTQ Venezuelan asylum seeker, who has disappeared after being detained by ICE. UPDATE: After this recording, Toczylowski confirmed said she received confirmation from the government that her client is in El Salvador and the case was set for a hearing a few weeks from now.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark. I'm joined by Lindsay Toslowski. She works for the Immigrant Defense Law Center, MDEF. She is joining us to talk about the deportations that has happened under the Aliens Enemies Act over the weekend. Fairly remarkable and alarming stuff that we've seen across the board. Highly controversial, and people are trying to unpack what's going on. Lindsay specifically had a very viral post that went up because, Lindsay, correct me if I'm wrong,

you have a client who was swept up in these deportations and sent to El Salvador, we believe. And you said in your thread that your client is not a member of the Trinidadrocoa Wang that is apparently being targeted here and you are looking for answers. Lindsay, did I get that? Did I get that right? And can you tell me, let's go sort of in chronological order here, but tell me a little bit about your client up to the point of what happened over the weekend. Sure. So yeah, that's correct. What you, that we have a client at Immigrant Defenders Law Center who we are based in California. We initially started representing him when he was detained at a facility here in California. Earlier this month, he was transferred 1300 miles away to a facility in Texas. His hearings remained in San Diego area. And so

we were continuing to represent him. And in fact, he was supposed to have a hearing last week. He didn't show up to that hearing. We had no information from ICE on why he didn't show up to the hearing. And it was rescheduled for today. However, in the interim between Thursday and today, our client has essentially disappeared. So your client is from Venezuela. I just want to be clear about that. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And your client is LGBTQ. Is that correct? Yes. When did your client come to America and why? So he came last year seeking asylum.

And I am going to be a bit careful on what we share about his specifics right now because, you know, we as immigration attorneys have been doing this for more than 15 years. We've never faced a situation where our clients are at such high risk of grave human rights violation, where their custody, whether it's in the custody of the government of El Salvador or in the United States, is so highly charged. And we just are unsure of the safety of our clients. We are being careful on some of the details that we're sharing. But I can say, um, and what I did say in my post is that he came here last year seeking asylum. Um, and upon entry into the U S um, some of his tattoos, which I can say, um, without any hint of a doubt that these are not gang tattoos,

um, were flagged by ICE and CBP. Um, And in the ensuing months since that happened, ICE did file evidence in his case that were simply pictures of the tattoos alleging affiliation with a Venezuelan gang. And because of that, he remained in custody. And we have not actually had a court hearing yet where we could refute the information, where he could move forward with his asylum application. And instead, you know, on the eve of that asylum hearing, our client was disappeared. He has now been, you know, is no longer showing up in the ICE detainee locator. He is not, the hearing for today has disappeared from the online portal. Did you, did your client willingly turn himself in for asylum or did he,

was he detained by ICE officials unwillingly? He willingly, through the CBP1 process. Okay. So he applied through the process, okay. And the tattoos that you talked about, so when he was applying, were those tattoos in the first instance of his interactions with border officials, were those tattoos noticed? And was that a circumstance for his detention? I mean, how did that, how did the tattoos come up? Yeah, so when, um, when migrants arrive at the Southern border, that is one of the things that we see happen often, which is that CBP does a review of whether or not they're going to transfer to ICE custody. And part of that is looking at, you know, whether or not they see

any security flags that would deem the person, um, that they think they need to detain them rather than release them. And tattoos and tattoos can be construed as a security flag if they are interpreted a certain way. Certainly. And what we also see is that there are particular countries, Venezuela being one of them, where this happens more often than someone from another country that has tattoos. And remind me, sorry, you said it already, but where was he initially detained? And then where was he transferred to? In the San Diego area. And he was transferred earlier this month to Texas.

Okay. And you were in the process of adjudicating his claims and reminded me again, had you had a hearing? I know you were waiting for one, but had you, where were you in the process of adjudication here? So he has had some hearings, but he had not had a hearing on the merits of his asylum claim yet. Was it made clear to the government that he believed he was being wrongfully accused of being in a Trinidad and Tobago gang? So it's something that we had

attempted to speak with the detention centers about, but it also is something that we hadn't had a hearing where we would have actually made any assertions. You know, we did think that the claim was so baseless that it would not, you know, be something that would be an issue in terms of his case. However, obviously, with the invocation of the Alien Anonymous Act, which can remove people with absolutely no due process and, you know, with completely baseless accusations, relegate someone to a prison in El Salvador. This is it's just not something that we were expecting to happen without us being able to even refute the allegations in any sort of formal setting. All right. Let's talk about this weekend. When was your first inclination that the administration was going to invoke the Aliens Enemies Act? So we saw, you know, along with everybody else, the news that this was happening, that

it was possibly happening. And, you know, we already knowing that the government was making this baseless allegation against our client. And to be clear, you know, our clients tattoos are tattoos that you would see on any art student in LA or New York. They would not be the types of tattoos that you would associate with any gang. But once we sort of heard that news and the fact that we could no longer talk to our client, um, we made many attempts over the weekend and on Friday to get in contact with our client. We learned that he was no longer at the facility that he had been at on Thursday.

Um, by Saturday, how did you learn that? We called the facility and we were told that he was not there. Um, and that he would be back to the facility at some point, but they didn't have any information about where he was. They told you he would come back. They did, but it was, you know, the receptionist at the facility said, oh, I think they're coming back. And at that point. Did you call the facility because you saw the news about the Trump administration using the Aliens Enemies Act and you thought, oh, no, this could be my client? Yes. Okay.

So you saw that. You called the facility. The facility says your client's not here, but he should be back. Correct. And at that point, we had also emailed the ICE attorneys on the case. We were getting increasingly worried. Also, we're supposed to have a hearing with our client today. And so we needed to speak to him to prepare for the hearing.

So there were, you know, a lot of concerns by late Friday and certainly Saturday morning. And by, you know, Saturday afternoon, as everything was happening, as we saw what was going on with the court case in D.C., we just knew that there were really serious risks. And by Saturday, he had actually also disappeared from the ICE online detainee locator, which is something that we had used to track where our clients are, what facilities. Why would they take him off of that? Presumably because he's no longer in an ICE facility. So once you're moved overseas, you're no longer an ICE detention. You're in El Salvadorian detention. I guess that makes sense.

Right. And so normally we would see this if our client gets out on bond, if our client wins their case and is released, and when someone's deported from the United States. So if they were deported back to their home country, once they leave ICE custody, they would no longer show up on the detainee locator. We always know when that happens, why the person's not showing up. It's very rare for us to have no clue about why our client is no longer showing up at a facility in Texas. Now, at the same time, this is being argued in district court and the judge says we need to issue a restraining order immediately and we have to turn those planes that are in the air around. Were you following that case in real time?

We were, we were actually listening in to what was happening and, you know, feeling relieved because we thought, you know, this client of ours who has been wrongly accused of being in a gang who we feel is high vulnerability, even in US government custody, because of his LGBTQ and because of his vulnerabilities, we thought that this meant that he would be returned to the US. And when I was her threat about what we thought about his case, we assumed that he would be returning to the United States because that's what the judge had ordered. Have you had actually any confirmation that he's in El Salvador? No, we have received absolutely no confirmation from anyone about our client's fate. And in fact,

So it's possible he might not, he might not have been on one of the planes, but there's no other explanation about where he would be. Correct. And we think given the factors of them wrongly accusing him of being in the very gang that they then invoked this act against um we think it's very likely but i can tell you that um you know when the propaganda video came out from um bukele and he posted that i watched it frame by frame looking for our client. We didn't see him in that video, but you can imagine for immigration attorneys who, we sometimes fear for our client's safety in the United States when they're in ICE detention centers, particularly when they're

vulnerable clients like this. We feared during remain in Mexico when our clients were forced to wait in places like Tijuana and Juarez. We feared for their safety. Having to watch that video of people in a facility where we know grave human rights violations take place regularly and know that I'm searching that video to see if our extremely vulnerable client is pictured in it is just a feeling that left us feeling so sick and helpless under the circumstances. Are there any other avenues for trying to determine if he's actually in El Salvador? I mean, I know the video was one. There was a second video the White House put out today. There's social media breadcrumbs that you're looking at. I mean, how do you go about trying to get information when it's not being provided by the government?

I mean, we'll be making inquiries with ICE today. We'll be trying to find out information. You know, there's another hearing in the federal litigation on this today. But it's almost unbelievable. It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that we're looking at social media posts of these videos to try to confirm whether it is being potentially tortured in El Salvador. Now, the White House has been unapologetic about this. They say jurisdictionally the planes were in international air territory and therefore the judge's ruling did not apply. There's no indication that they would ever bring these people back. In fact, we've

paid El Salvador to house them in this facility. What are your expectations for possible relief here? We'll obviously be watching the litigation that the ACLU is pursuing extremely carefully. But at this moment, despite years of experience as an immigration attorney, despite running one of the largest deportation defense organizations in California. We are in uncharted waters. It's extremely unclear what our avenues are for relief at this point. We have never had any situation even slightly similar to this. And we are going to be working with our partners across the country, other immigration attorneys who find themselves in the same situation. Obviously, right now, our paramount concern is for our clients' safety and well-being. And all of this is happening

because our client specifically was not given any due process whatsoever to be able to refute a baseless allegation made. And that to me should send chills down every U.S. citizen's spine, down the spine of every immigrant in the United States, because it really shows the brazenness with which the Trump administration is willing to flout the laws, willing to break the law in order to move forward their political agenda. Can you contextualize the use of the Alien Enemies Act here? I mean, obviously, it's a wartime authority. It's only been used four times before.

We're not technically at war. Let's just assume that it was applied accurately. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. Is it true that they many questions about what happens to people once the act is applied that are at play here. Certainly, you know, the escalation of sending people to essentially a prison camp in El Salvador, where we know human rights violations have taken place, is an escalation even beyond what I think many of us believe was one of the darkest chapters in US history when this act was used to put people of Japanese heritage into camps and detain them there. And so I think there are a lot of questions that lawyers like me and others across the country are really trying to wade through because this is such a piece of the law that has been used so infrequently. So it's very unclear on multiple levels, on the due process level, on where these people were sent,

and on the current conditions that they are in now, whether or not, you know, we certainly believe that there were many illegal actions taken by the administration and the application in this case. All right. My last question for you, are you in touch at all with people who know your client and what are those conversations been like in the last 24 hours? So our team has been in contact with, um, yes, people who know our client and those have been heartbreaking conversations. Um, we are in a position as lawyers that we hate to be in, which is, we don't know the answers right now. Um, and we don't even have the ability to tell, um, you know, friends and family, whether our family whether our client is safe or where he is.

And that's a terrifying position to be in as a lawyer. So if I could summarize those conversations, it would be heartbreaking. All right, Lindsay, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Please keep us posted on how things go with your client if there's any breakthrough. And thank you for sharing the story with us.