Merwil Gutiérrez had no criminal record when ICE agents detained the 19-year-old outside his home. Now his father, Wilmer, is still searching for answers.
Wilmer Gutierrez, 40, poses for a portrait outside the shared home where he lived with his son Merwil Gutierrez, 19, in Bronx, NY on Friday, April 4, 2025. Gutierrez has not been able to contact his son since his sudden deportation to El Salvador, where he has been held in prison since March, as part of a Trump administration move that invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport over 200 Venezuelan immigrants the administration alleged to have gang ties. Photo: Anna Watts for Documented
Wilmer Gutiérrez still doesn’t understand how his son ended up in the most notorious prison in the world. While scrolling through photos on his phone, he revisits snapshots of him and his son in the Colombian jungle, crossing the border, working together. There are other moments where they’re both surrounded by family back home in Venezuela. Now, inside the six-bedroom apartment in the Bronx that he shares with 12 other people, Wilmer looks at the photos with nostalgia and sorrow.
On February 24, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained his 19-year-old son, Merwil Gutiérrez, and another 237 Venezuelans. He had no criminal record, neither in Venezuela nor the U.S., nor did he have any tattoos — one of the features that the U.S. police used to link them to the Tren de Aragua gang. But none of that stopped him from being arrested.
“I feel like my son was kidnapped,” said Gutiérrez in Spanish. “I’ve spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case.”
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After sending Merwil to Texas, they transferred him to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison. This was an unprecedented move due to Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which intended to fast-track the removal of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, with officials claiming the Venezuelan criminal organization was part of an “invasion” of the United States and posed a significant national security threat.
Amid the comings and goings of other tenants, the noise of children playing, and the watchful eye of security cameras installed by the apartment’s owner, Wilmer tries to recount how his son became one of the hundreds of men sent to El Salvador. Many of the detainees were like Merwil: randomly picked up without any prior suspicion. CBS’s 60 Minutes discovered that 75% of the Venezuelans now imprisoned had no criminal record after they obtained internal government documents and cross-referenced them with domestic and international court filings along with news reports and arrest records.
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Wilmer only found out his son had been detained after receiving a phone call on February 24 from his nephew, Luis, who lives with them. That morning was their last time together; they had gone around the corner to do their laundry. Later that day, Wilmer said that his son met with a friend to get help with some errands at the American Red Cross. He learned this from Luis, who looked at the situation from inside the apartment: When his son was on his way back, just steps from his home, ICE agents stopped him. “The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said, ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said, ‘Take him anyway.’”
That moment marked the beginning of Wilmer’s search for answers — answers he’s still waiting for.
Living the American dream
Before moving to the U.S. in 2023, Wilmer led a calm, steady life with his family. He lived in Los Teques, a town near Caracas, Venezuela, and worked for PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil and natural gas company. Later, he started his own cellphone repair business all to support his loved ones, which included his mother, who was battling cancer, and his three children: his son Merwil and his daughter Wisleidy, and his youngest daughter Wiskelly who lived with her mother in Perú.
But none of those jobs were enough to cover even the most basic expenses. “With how things were going in Venezuela, your monthly salary wasn’t even enough to buy food,” Gutiérrez says. That, combined with Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship and the country’s ongoing political instability, pushed him to make a decision: once his son Merwil finished school, they would begin their journey toward the American dream — a place where they could have a more stable and better life.
On May 19, 2023, Wilmer began the journey to the U.S. on foot and by bus. Merwil, his father, and his nephew Luis joined him. Their first stop was Colombia, where they crossed the Darién jungle towards Panama — a route taken by nearly every Venezuelan migrant trying to reach the U.S. The journey lasted about a month until they reached Ciudad de Juárez, a town in Mexico near the U.S. border. From there, they applied for an appointment to seek humanitarian parole using the CBP One app. They waited one week until they were able to secure an appointment with immigration authorities. In the city, they even got a job on a hotel remodeling site while waiting until June 21, the date they had to show up to the immigration authorities. Wilmer recalls sleeping rough that night, right on the U.S. border. They had to do it to avoid losing their place in the long line that formed outside the immigration office each day.
Once inside the country, they reported to the authorities, explained their situation, and they opened an asylum case. They were first sent to a shelter in Texas, then transferred to Denver, and eventually took bus tickets to New York. Wilmer, Merwil, and Luis arrived at the Roosevelt Hotel for registration — an emblematic symbol of New York’s migrant crisis, designated as both an arrival center and temporary shelter for asylum seekers.
During that same week of June, they ended up in an industrial shed near JFK Airport that had been repurposed as a shelter. “It looked like a hospital ward,” Wilmer recalled, describing the rows of small sleeping couches lined up side by side. From there, after they got work permission, they began searching for jobs. “Every day, we’d walk around Manhattan and nearby areas, asking people if they knew of any job openings,” he says. After two weeks of the same routine, a friend gave them a tip: if they went to some warehouses near JFK at night, there would almost always be work available.
They got it in July. So, they started working at a warehouse near the airport that handled Shein and Temu orders arriving on flights from China. After securing a contract, they sought legal help to get a work permit and a Social Security number. The job operated through a large WhatsApp group, where the boss would send out the nightly schedule — listing the names of those selected for the 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. shift. The Gutiérrez family worked at least six nights a week, earning $140 per shift.
“Our days were completely upside down,” says Gutiérrez. “My son and I slept during the day and worked at night. There was never time for parties or anything like that. We’d just go back to the apartment in the Bronx, the one we found through a friend, which we shared with people we didn’t even know, and lock ourselves in our room until the next shift came around.”
That was their routine until news about their immigration papers came in. Their court date to formalize their situation had been scheduled for February 2027.
Deported to a foreign country
The last time Wilmer spoke to his son was on March 14, during a brief phone call allowed by the police so he could contact a family member. Wilmer had reached him after an exhausting search, going from place to place in hopes of finding answers. He first went to the local police station, where they sent him to the courthouse. From there, he visited other precincts, but the response was always the same: “Your son isn’t here. We have no information about his case.
Over the phone, Wilmer could tell that his son was confused but calm. Merwil told him he was still being held in Pennsylvania and that, apparently, he would be transferred to Texas and then sent back to Venezuela. But that never happened.
It was only after seeing a news report listing the 238 Venezuelans detained that Gutiérrez found out his son had been sent to El Salvador under the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He could imagine the conditions his son was facing after watching videos circulating on social media that showed detainees having their heads shaved by authorities and being abruptly marched to their cells. “I could have understood if he’d been sent back to Venezuela,” he says. “But why to a foreign country he’s never even been to?”
According to William Parra, an immigration attorney from Inmigración Al Día, the law firm representing Merwil’s case, his detention was unjustified since he currently has an immigration court case pending with his father and was showing up to court and doing the right things. “Merwil was detained for hanging out with friends and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. ICE was not looking for him, nor is there any evidence whatsoever that Merwil was in any gang.”
Parra adds that the office has tried to reach ICE to see where they have Merwil detained since his family and their firm have been unable to locate him on the ICE detainee locater system. “Per ICE, they claim to have him detained in Philipsburg, PA, but at this moment that claim is unverified. At this time, I am working to try to get in contact with Merwil.”
ICE did not return Documented’s questions for comment.
The Trump administration has recognized they mistakenly deported some individuals among the 238 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident with TPS status whose detention ICE admitted was an “administrative error.” Wilmer said he hopes his son’s detention could also be an “administrative error.” The wait for him, he says, has been desperate and anguishing.
In the meantime, he has questioned some things, including his faith in the American Dream. Because what looked like a dream at first, wasn’t. After moving here, he left his daughter in Venezuela and his mother, who died from cancer last December. He couldn’t say goodbye to her.
Yes, the U.S. offered Gutiérrez a better salary, but at the cost of worse working and living conditions. And more painful than that, he says, is the feeling that this country has torn his family apart. That’s why he’s thinking about leaving.
Staring out the window, his eyes heavy and shoulders slumped, he let out a quiet sigh — the kind that comes after too many sleepless nights and dead ends. Around him, the room buzzed with quiet murmurs and the clinking of dishes as the people who lived with him tried their best to offer comfort. Before heading back to another long night shift at the warehouse, he says, “All I want is to put this behind me and fly back to my country. I’m just waiting for my son to be released.”
Correction April 14, 2025: This article mistakenly reported that Wilmer and his son applied for TPS through the CBP One app, instead of an appointment seeking humanitarian parole. We also incorrectly noted the date of his detainment, which was February 24, not March 15. We apologize for the error.
