Los más de 250 migrantes venezolanos deportados de forma irregular a El Salvador desde Estados Unidos bajo el argumento de pertenecer a la organización criminal del Tren de Aragua se han vuelto una suerte de moneda de cambio para el Gobierno de Nayib Bukele. El presidente salvadoreño propuso el domingo a su homólogo venezolano, Nicolás Maduro, un intercambio de “presos políticos”, esto es, los que permanecen en la megacárcel creada en 2023 y conocida oficialmente como Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot), a cambio de presos que se encuentran en Venezuela, entre ellos muchos cercanos a la oposición. Caracas ha rechazado este lunes la propuesta calificándola de “cínica”.

En un comunicado publicado por el fiscal general de Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, el ministerio público ha solicitado la “inmediata liberación” de los migrantes que El Salvador mantiene detenidos. Saab ha asegurado que el Cecot es “un lugar de desaparición forzada de inocentes de nacionalidad venezolana (…) a quienes, como experto en traficar con seres humanos, [Bukele] utiliza para recibir a cambio sumas millonarias de dinero”. Por recibir a los deportados por el Gobierno estadounidense, El Salvador recibe una compensación de seis millones de dólares (algo más de cinco millones de euros).

Saab, que no hizo referencia alguna al estatus legal, las circunstancias en las que se encuentran encarcelados ni al paradero de algunos de los presos políticos venezolanos, asegura que le comunicó su preocupación por la situación de los migrantes a Volker Türk, Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas, quien a su vez en repetidas ocasiones ha hecho peticiones a Caracas para que libere a los presos políticos detenidos arbitrariamente.

“A diferencia de nuestros detenidos, muchos de los cuales han asesinado, otros han cometido violaciones, y algunos incluso habían sido arrestados en múltiples ocasiones antes de ser deportados, sus presos políticos no han cometido ningún delito”, afirmó el presidente de El Salvador en su mensaje del domingo. A su vez, Bukele solicitó a su homólogo venezolano “la liberación y entrega de un número idéntico (252) de los miles de presos políticos”, entre los cuales, aseguró, se encuentran Rafael Tudares, yerno del candidato opositor Edmundo González y a quien las autoridades venezolanas acusan de estar vinculado con redes de narcotráfico; el periodista y dirigente del partido Voluntad Popular, Roland Carreño, y la abogada Rocío San Miguel, acusada de participar de un intento de magnicidio en contra de Maduro.

El número de presos políticos en Venezuela se multiplicó por cuatro después de las protestas posteriores a las elecciones presidenciales del 28 de julio pasado, en las que la oposición asegura que venció y que el triunfo de Maduro no es más que una victoria fraudulenta. Entre agosto y septiembre del año pasado, Venezuela llegó a tener 1.500 presos políticos. Hacia el mes de diciembre, las autoridades chavistas comenzaron a revisar casos judiciales y se produjo una excarcelación de varias decenas de personas.

Por su parte, los familiares de los ciudadanos venezolanos detenidos en el Cecot apenas han tenido noticias de ellos desde su deportación por parte del Gobierno estadounidense. Varios de los migrantes les avisaron antes de subir al avión de que serían expulsados a Venezuela, tras lo cual aparecieron en El Salvador. Familiares de los deportados han rechazado las acusaciones que vinculan a los migrantes deportados con El Tren de Aragua ―una organización criminal nacida en Venezuela con presencia en varios países de la región― y el palacio de Miraflores ha organizado actos públicos y manifestaciones para exigir su liberación.

La deportación de ciudadanos venezolanos al Cecot de El Salvador desde Estados Unidos ha producido reacciones encontradas entre muchas figuras públicas de Venezuela. Los sectores de la oposición más críticos con María Corina Machado -que siga siendo la líder con más fuerza entre los críticos del chavismo- le recriminan su postura neutral en este tema, calificándola de subordinada a Donald Trump. Machado ha respondido que hace todas las gestiones posibles para salvar el destino de los prisioneros inocentes, pero ha dicho que no es un tema que se deba dirimir públicamente para que el esfuerzo pueda tener eficacia.

El presidente Bukele ha sido uno de los más férreos aliados del presidente Donald Trump en la región. El 14 de abril, visitó a su homólogo en la Casa Blanca, donde reafirmó su compromiso de recibir en El Salvador más migrantes deportados y rechazó la posibilidad de devolver a Estados Unidos a Kilmar Armando Abrego García, un trabajador de la construcción salvadoreño que llevaba 14 años en el país y que fue deportado por error a su país de origen. “¿Cómo voy a meter de contrabando a un terrorista en Estados Unidos? Por supuesto, no voy a hacerlo”, manifestó Bukele en el Despacho Oval, pese a que las autoridades judiciales no han dado por probados los presuntos vínculos de Abrego con la Mara Salvatrucha, una de las pandillas a las que Bukele ha declarado la guerra.

Diversas organizaciones han denunciado las repetidas violaciones de los derechos humanos que se producen en las cárceles salvadoreñas desde la llegada de Nayib Bukele a la presidencia. Cristosal, la principal organización en defensa de los derechos humanos de la sociedad civil en El Salvador, ha documentado la muerte de decenas de presos por torturas, golpes o asfixia mecánica por estrangulación. En el Cecot―prisión que han visitado la secretaria de Seguridad de Trump, Kristi Noem, y la ministra de Seguridad argentina, Patricia Bullrich― cientos de personas permanecen detenidas por una cuestión tan difusa como la “asociación ilícita” o por el hecho de tener tatuajes.

Last weekend, immigration attorney Liudmila Armas Marcelo spent her time not just listening to — but above all, calming — many of her desperate clients who had received orders to leave the United States within seven days. Her phone rang nonstop. On the other end were people on the brink of a breakdown. One client’s blood pressure skyrocketed. Another’s son, who suffers from health issues, was severely affected. “People panicked,” Marcelo recalls.

What she never expected was that she, a U.S. citizen, would also be notified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to leave the country “immediately.”

On April 11, she received the same email that had been landing in the inboxes of over 936,500 people who entered the U.S. since January 2023 via the CBP One appointment system — a tool introduced by the Biden administration to help manage the migration crisis at the southern border. It’s a message that could rattle anyone — citizen or not — with a tone Marcelo describes as “very aggressive and very frightening.”

The DHS email, obtained by EL PAÍS, begins with a blunt message: “It is time for you to leave the United States.” It goes on to say that the department is exercising its discretion to terminate the parole previously granted — along with any associated government benefits, such as a work permit. The letter warns that failing to comply could lead to “potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal.” In another line, the threat is even more explicit: “Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you.”

The email began arriving in inboxes in early April — often in the middle of the night, at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Some recipients saw it immediately; others found it when they woke up.

Marcelo says she wasn’t alarmed when she received the email because she is a naturalized Cuban, and immediately thought it could be “a mistake.” She later learned that the message had reached not only other citizens like her, it had also been sent to permanent residents, individuals in the process of regularizing their immigration status, and even to people who had never entered the U.S. through the CBP One system — individuals who remained in Mexico after the Trump administration disabled the app on its very first day in office.

Adriana and Luis, two 29-year-old Cuban residents of Odessa, Texas, arrived in the United States through CBP One in November 2023. Like many others, they received the same message that landed in attorney Marcelo’s inbox. Adriana saw it in the early hours of April 11; Luis, the night before. Both were frightened, but something about it felt off. Adriana is currently awaiting her green card after applying under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants legal status to Cubans living in the U.S., while Luis has been a permanent resident for several months.

“I was worried that it could have been a system error,” says Luis. Amid the uncertainty, they immediately contacted their lawyer. “I emailed her, and she cleared up my doubts,” adds Adriana. “Seeing that it has reached people who are even citizens has put my mind at ease.”

But Marcelo believes that arbitrarily sending the email to so many people has already caused serious harm and is “unforgivable.” “They didn’t bother to determine who the person was, whether they actually entered the United States, whether they are in the country illegally or are already residents,” she says. “I’m waiting for an explanation from the [government], but so far nothing has come. I don’t know if they’re waiting for some people to panic and leave.”

The ‘mistakes’ that the Trump administration won’t fix

The Donald Trump administration is making alleged “mistakes” that are already taking their toll on the country’s migrant community. Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to purge the country of “criminals,” yet many of those detained or deported under his policies had no criminal records.

Perhaps the most well-known case is that of Kilmar Abrego García, a 29-year-old Salvadoran deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison. He was deported with more than 230 other men allegedly tied to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran group MS-13 — but his family say he has no connection to the gangs.

Now, the email instructing thousands of migrants who entered the U.S. via the CBP One app to leave the country represents yet another “failure” of the system — another action by the administration that violates “due process.” Attorney Marcelo is certain that, as the months go by, “we’ll begin to see more and more cases where due process may have been violated. That’s what happens when there’s this lack of responsibility and negligence,” she says.

The lawyer argues that it’s clear the government is operating in a highly disorganized manner in its push to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Or worse, that it hopes migrants will take the initiative to self-deport using CBP One’s counterpart, the CBP Home app, which allows individuals to voluntarily report their departure from the country — though the supposed benefits of using it remain unclear to both migrants and their attorneys.

Other lawyers like Marcelo received notices to leave the United States simply because they had registered accounts with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to monitor their clients’ cases. “They didn’t even bother to check who had actually entered through CBP One or which emails were professional, belonging to a lawyer. That’s why I see a lack of seriousness in how this was handled,” she says.

As if that weren’t enough, Marcelo insists the government also failed to properly identify the recipients in the messages. “How can anyone be sure the email was really meant for them and not just a system error?” she asks. “They’re not concerned about people’s peace of mind; on the contrary, they’re contributing to a level of fear and panic that many have no reason to feel.”

Self-deport or stay?

A week after the DHS emails were sent, the government began revoking I-94 entry permits for those who arrived through CBP One, stripping them of their legal status in the U.S. and invalidating the work permits they had been granted. The fear has left many wondering what to do next: self-deport, as the email urges, or stay put and wait.

Marcelo strongly advises against leaving the country, especially for those with pending immigration court cases. “If people start leaving, that doesn’t count as voluntary departure, and when the court arrives and the judge asks for the person, he or she will immediately issue a deportation order in absentia,” she explains.

The attorney believes that what’s happening with CBP One beneficiaries could foreshadow similar outcomes for other programs like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or humanitarian parole, which the government attempted to suspend, a move that was blocked by the courts.

“The same thing is going to happen, because these are programs that, in their context, were created to regulate entry into the country. You can’t say now that the program is illegal and all the existing ones are illegal, because you’re retroactively punishing the person,” says Marcelo.

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Written in baroque letters, the inscription on the grenade launcher confirmed a peculiar friendship: “In memory of your friend Nazario Moreno FM 12-25-2005.” The date suggested the weapon was a Christmas gift; the initials, FM, pointed to an old criminal brand born in Mexico’s Central Pacific, La Familia Michoacana. Nazario Moreno, after all, had been the leader of the first group to use that brand name, its actual creator, commander of a powerful criminal hybrid with enormous propaganda capabilities, which had established a stronghold in the mountains and on the coasts of Michoacán, and employed techniques as savage as its nemesis at the time, the Los Zetas cartel.

There was another legend on the grenade launcher, which also identified its wielder, “Commander Ubaldo Hurtado.” Authorities had found the weapon when they searched the vehicle in which Hurtado was traveling, as evidenced by an internal document from the State Attorney General’s Office of Mexico, to which EL PAÍS has had access. The agency does not say where or how the arrest took place. It only indicates the date, November 22, 2012. It adds that Hurtado was also carrying an AR-15 rifle and a 30-round magazine. It is unknown whether the man, who was 59 at the time, was detained or released. At least the police took photos of everything, images they included in their files.

Thirteen years on, the inscription on that grenade launcher has been revealed as the most obvious link between the first and second iterations of La Familia Michoacana, the old and the new, elevated this week — the new one — to the criminal top tier, alongside the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The United States Department of Justice has announced drug trafficking charges against Johnny and José Alfredo Hurtado Olascoaga, both sons of Ubaldo Hurtado. The United States justice system accuses them of trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl, and is offering rewards of $5 million and $3 million for information leading to their whereabouts.

It’s unclear how Ubaldo Hurtado and Nazario Moreno, alias “Chayo,” one of the most enigmatic criminals in recent Mexican history, met. Chayo, who died in 2014, built the old Familia Michoacana in the early 2000s, following an evangelical logic, a cult of his personality and beliefs. He saw himself as a Robin Hood and demanded loyalty bordering on devotion. His battles with Los Zetas raised the level of brutality to new heights in Mexico, a semiotics of severed heads, displayed as messages of crime, a reality still present in the country.

Did the two men, Ubaldo and Nazario, meet during those battles? Or was this Commander Ubaldo, in fact, another of his sons, who bears the same name, and had simply lent his father his weapon? Whatever the case, it seems clear that this bond united both families in an exercise of criminal inheritance, reinforced in the last decade. Although it continues to use the same name, La Familia Michoacana is now a distinct organization. It operates primarily from Guerrero and the State of Mexico, less so in Michoacán. Its business comprises two fronts: international drug trafficking and mafia control of dozens of municipalities in both states.

Born in March 1973, Johnny is the leader of La Nueva Familia Michoacana and the eldest of the Hurtado Olascoaga brothers. Discreet and a lover of deer hunting, according to official documents reviewed by this newspaper, he is nicknamed “El Pez,” although it is unclear where the nickname comes from. It could be an extension of one of the family businesses, a restaurant near Arcelia, Guerrero, where the specialty was fried mojarra. El Pez was born and raised there, in Arcelia, one of the main municipalities of Guerrero’s Tierra Caliente, connected by hundreds of gaps to the Pacific coast, the Michoacán mountains, and the colder areas near Toluca, in the State of Mexico.

There are few photos of El Pez, none recent. What there are are images of the criminal group’s ranches, which belong primarily to him and his brother José Alfredo, “El Fresa,” the organization’s second-in-command. In March, authorities in the State of Mexico seized 21 properties, some of them extravagantly luxurious, with exotic animal heads hanging on the walls, or even whole, stuffed animals placed on tables — a tiger, for example — decorating the hallways, but also lakes, swimming pools, and enormous pantries.

The size and luxury of these properties give an idea of the economic capabilities of La Nueva Familia Michoacana, a group that experts on the country’s criminal dynamics place only behind the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG on the criminal power lists. “La Nueva Familia Michoacana is the third most important macro-criminal group in the country,” David Saucedo told this newspaper in February, when the U.S. designated La Familia and six other criminal groups as terrorist organizations. Another specialist, Eduardo Guerrero, added that the group has a presence in more than a third of the country’s 32 states and that its “financial prosperity” reflects its “rapid growth.”

“They call him ‘El Fresa’”

In November 2024, Los Tucanes de Tijuana and Luis R. Conríquez, two of the greatest exponents of regional Mexican music, released a song together, titled Le apodan El Fresa (They call him El Fresa.) Although it wasn’t the first song the music industry dedicated to the youngest of the Hurtado Olascoaga brothers, it marked a qualitative leap in the group’s criminal narrative. La Nueva Familia has been on the authorities’ radar for more than 10 years. At times, the Mexican army’s intelligence apparatus has followed them daily. But, for some reason, they’ve always flown lower than the rest of the cartels.

The song by Conríquez and Los Tucanes is not too far from what others recount, a prose poem about the moral quality of the protagonist, sprinkled with kind epithets: party-loving, loyal, generous, always surrounded by beautiful women… That these artists sang it catapulted the group to stardom in the criminal imagination, a fantasy that matched reality this week with the statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. The promotion also came accompanied by accusations against the other two siblings, Ubaldo, born in 1979, and Adita, born in 1975.

El Pez and El Fresa belong to different generations. Nine years younger than his much less discreet brother, El Fresa is a millennial. Spotify features playlists with songs dedicated to him by more than a dozen artists. In a track by Calibre 50, Strawberryfish, the band sings, “Yes, I treat myself to luxury because there’s money to spend.” Last year, at the Tejupilco fair in the Tierra Caliente region of the State of Mexico, El Fresa attended a concert by two other regional music singers, Remmy Valenzuela and Edén Muñoz, where he even had his photo taken.

This casual, approachable attitude, comparable to that of Los Chapitos, the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, transcends leisure time. Two and a half years ago, after the massacre of 20 people in San Miguel Totolapan, a town neighboring Arcelia, including the mayor and his father — who had also been mayor — El Fresa recorded a video from one of his ranches, stating that he had almost been killed as well and had narrowly escaped. The government later denied this claim and said that, in fact, La Familia was responsible for the massacre.

Beyond the authorship, it was extraordinary that a criminal leader would appear on video to discuss such a situation, even admitting to the alleged murder of his attackers. “My brother gave me the scolding of my life, for being so confident, without people around,” he said in the video. It is unknown what El Pez said afterward about the video in question. El Fresa did not respond and since then, with the exception of the Tejupilco concerts in 2024, he has kept a low profile.

At this year’s fair in the municipality, held in the first half of April, Luis R. Conríquez was playing. The suspicion that El Fresa would attend the fair to hear his own song grew stronger. But then the controversy over narcocorridos arose, and Conríquez announced he would stop singing them. Given the renewed interest from authorities in the criminal leader on both sides of the border, it’s likely that Conríquez was unwittingly doing him a favor.

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