By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man who said he was wrongfully identified as a gang member and deported to a notorious El Salvador prison in violation of a U.S. court order has sued the U.S. government for at least $1.3 million in damages.
Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, a barber who lived in Irving, Texas, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court in Washington, accusing the government of false imprisonment, negligence and other claims.
Rengel alleges he was wrongly identified in March 2025 as a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and detained by U.S. immigration officers while he was heading to work. The lawsuit said the only justification offered at the time of his arrest was that his tattoos indicated gang membership.
"This case reveals an illegal and morally bereft plan of action at the highest levels of our government to defy a federal court, strip a man of his rights, and hand him over to a foreign government for torture to prove a political point," said Norm Eisen, a lawyer for Rengel. "Adrián Rengel spent four months in abhorrent, inhumane conditions because senior officials chose to flout the rule of law.”
DHS SAYS RENGEL A PUBLIC SAFETY THREAT
The lawsuit appears to be the first seeking damages from the U.S. by a deportee to the prison in El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement, reiterated its claim that Rengel entered the country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren de Aragua. The agency said Rengel was deemed "a public safety threat."
The Trump administration made a crackdown on immigration a hallmark of the president’s second term, which began in January 2025. Rengel was one of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported by the administration to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center last year.
Rengel spent four months in the maximum-security prison, where he said Salvadoran officials subjected him to physical and psychological abuse, humiliation and degradation.
He was released from the center in July 2025 and sent back to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap agreement between the United States and Venezuela. Rengel last year filed a formal administrative complaint against the U.S., a necessary precursor to bringing a lawsuit.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario, Rod Nickel)
