Nathali Sánchez last heard from her husband March 14, when he called from a Texas detention center to say he was being deported back to Venezuela. Later that night, he texted her through a government messaging app for detainees.

“I love you,” he wrote, “soon we will be together forever.”

Her husband, Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, a musician, had been in American custody for a month, calling every few days to assure his family that he was OK, his relatives said. Now, the couple believed they would reunite and he would finally meet his daughter, Nahiara, who had been born during his brief stint as a migrant in the United States.

But less than a day later, Suárez was shackled, loaded onto a plane and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, according to an internal government list of detainees obtained by the New York Times. Around the time Suárez was texting his wife, the Trump administration was quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime power that allows the government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation.

Suárez and 237 others, the Trump administration argued after the order became public, were all members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, which was “aligned with” the Venezuelan government and was “perpetrating” an invasion of the United States.

It was an extraordinary move: The act has only been invoked three times in American history, experts say — most recently in World War II, when it was used to detain German, Italian and Japanese people.

And in this case, the Venezuelan men were declared “alien enemies” and shipped to a prison with little or no opportunity to contest the allegations against them, according to migrants, their lawyers, court testimony, judges and interviews with dozens of prisoners’ families conducted by the New York Times.

The government’s public declaration of the act was made March 15 at 3:53 p.m., according to court records. The migrants were all on flights to El Salvador by 7:36 p.m.

Yet most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses, a Times investigation has found. And very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang.

As they were being expelled, the detainees repeatedly begged officials to explain why they were being deported and where they were being taken, one of their lawyers told the courts. At no point, the lawyer said, did officers indicate that the men were being sent to El Salvador or that they were removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

Lack of due process

The Alien Enemies Act gives the U.S. government broad powers to detain people during times of war, but Supreme Court rulings make clear that detainees have a right to challenge the government, and are entitled to a hearing, before their removal.

Last month, an appeals court judge criticized the lack of due process under the Trump administration. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act,” Judge Patricia Millett said.

Then, last week, all nine Supreme Court justices said that targeted individuals must be given time to contest their removal before they’re expelled — and demanded that the Trump administration provide that opportunity going forward.

In court, the administration has argued that the men can still challenge their incarceration — but that will be difficult, if not impossible, because they are already in El Salvador, out of reach of the American justice system, with little access to lawyers or even their family members.

“They should stay there for the rest of their lives,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said last week.

Then on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador forcefully backed the administration during a visit to the White House. He flatly rejected the idea of returning a Maryland man who had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador, despite the Supreme Court’s instructions that the United States take steps to bring back the migrant.

Who is imprisoned?

The Trump administration claims that all of the 238 Venezuelan men now imprisoned in El Salvador are members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang born in Venezuela. Their expulsion, the administration argues, is part of its plan to deport the worst migrant offenders.

Officials say they used criminal records, social media, surveillance data, interviews with migrants and other information, like tattoos, to make their accusations.

But a Times investigation found little evidence of any criminal background — or any association with the gang — for most of the men. In fact, the prosecutors, law enforcement officials, court documents and media reports that the Times uncovered or spoke to in multiple countries suggested that only a few of the detainees might have had any connection to Tren de Aragua.

Seeking to provide a fuller picture of who was imprisoned, a team of Times reporters and researchers ran the 238 names through three U.S. public records databases; checked backgrounds in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile; scoured court documents and news articles; spoke to dozens of family members; and interviewed experts on Tren de Aragua.

The findings are not comprehensive — there is no global public database to search for every accusation, and the U.S. government did not share its evidence against the detainees. But the Times’ investigation provides a snapshot of who the United States sent to El Salvador.

Some of the prisoners do appear to have committed grave crimes. At least 32 of the men sent to El Salvador have faced serious criminal accusations or convictions in the United States or abroad, including a man accused of participating in an assault in Chicago, another convicted of trying to smuggle arms out of the United States and others accused of theft, strangulation, domestic battery or harboring immigrants living in the country illegally.

One has a homicide conviction in Venezuela, according to court documents. Another man was accused in Chile of kidnapping, drugging and raping a woman during a four-day rage.

Chilean prosecutors also believe the man is a member of Tren de Aragua, according to court documents. Investigators say they found his name and messages in the phones of other gang members.

Beyond that, the Times found that another two dozen of the men locked up in El Salvador had been accused or found guilty of lower-level offenses in the United States or elsewhere, including trespassing, speeding in a school zone and driving an improperly registered vehicle.

But for the others, including Suárez, the musician, the Times found no evidence of a criminal background, beyond offenses related to being migrants in the country without legal permission. Suárez’s family presented official certificates from Venezuela, Colombia and Chile — where he lived in the past — saying he had no convictions in those nations.

All 238 men will spend at least a year in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a sprawling complex of concrete and barbed wire built by Bukele, who has called himself “a dictator” and promoted the prison as a holding pen for his country’s worst criminals.

The United States is paying the government of El Salvador to incarcerate the Venezuelan prisoners. On social platform X, the Salvadoran leader called the yearlong sentence “renewable.”

Court battle

The U.S. government’s use of the alien act is now the subject of an intense court battle between the administration and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers say the government has not met the standard to invoke the measure: a war with or invasion by Venezuela.

The groups also argue the government has violated the migrants’ rights to contest the accusation that they are members of Tren de Aragua and therefore “alien enemies.”

In court, the government has said that it has broad powers to determine what constitutes a war or invasion, as well as to decide who is a member of the gang, which the administration recently designated a foreign terrorist organization.

Last week, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration could continue deporting people using the Alien Enemies Act while the legal fight plays out in the courts — as long as detainees have a chance to challenge their expulsions.

In a related case, the Supreme Court this month also ordered the Trump administration to take steps to return the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, whom the government conceded it had sent to El Salvador in error.

In that case, a judge found that the government had decided García was a member of another notorious gang, MS-13, on the basis of flimsy evidence.

As for the prisoners accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said that all the men sent to El Salvador are “actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

“We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence,” she added. “We have a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process.”

‘Many times, we had to run for our lives’

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting Venezuelan migrants began just after President Donald Trump took office.

Suárez, the musician, came from a once middle-class family in Venezuela, the second oldest of seven siblings. His mother was an educator, his father a bricklayer. In 2014, he joined mass protests against the country’s authoritarian government, said his older brother, Nelson Suárez, 35, who now lives in the United States.

But when the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, tightened his grip and the Venezuelan economy spiraled into crisis, leaving millions hungry, Arturo Suárez left for Colombia, then Chile.

“Many times, we had to run for our lives,” said Nelson Suárez, “until we decided to leave.”

In Chile, Arturo Suárez installed refrigerators and began building a following as a singer, mixing rap, hip-hop and reggaeton.

“There’s no sin here; there’s no sentence,” he sang in one song, about a woman who works the streets to escape poverty.

He met his wife, Sánchez, at a music event.

In the United States, Suárez believed he could advance his music career, said his brother, and make money to send back to his growing family.

He entered the United States on Sept. 3 using a Biden-era application that allowed people to present themselves at the border and ask for entry, according to documents reviewed by the Times. Officials allowed him in with an order to appear in court March 6, where he would have the opportunity to fight removal.

On Feb. 8, Arturo Suárez arrived at a house in Raleigh, N.C., to record a music video. But U.S. immigration agents showed up and hauled him away, according his brother.

Soon, Suárez was in detention in Georgia. Suárez told his brother that officials didn’t seem to believe he was guilty of anything more than being a migrant.

“If this had been another moment, they would have let him go,” the brother said Suárez told him. “But since we are in this madness he was going to stay in the hands of ICE.”

Point system

In dozens of interviews, family members said that once the men were detained, U.S. officials focused on their tattoos.

In an interview, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said tattoos were just one factor used to determine if an individual was a member of Tren de Aragua. But an internal government document made public in court filings indicates how much weight is given to tattoos.

The document, called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” instructs immigration officials to use a point system to identify members of Tren de Aragua. Eight points makes someone a “validated” member of the group. Having tattoos associated with the gang is worth 4 points.

Wearing clothing associated with the gang is worth another 4.

In interviews, five Venezuelan experts on Tren de Aragua — two police officials, two scholars and a journalist — told the Times that while some transnational gangs use tattoos as indicators of membership, the Venezuelan group did not.

“In the case of the Tren de Aragua,” said Luis Izquiel, a professor of criminology at Venezuela’s Central University, “there is no common pattern of similar tattoos among its members.”

Of the 30 men whose family members or lawyers spoke to the Times, at least 27 have tattoos.

Suárez has 33, said his family, reflecting his urban music aesthetic. They include one of his signature phrases, they said: “The future is bright.”

The Trump administration began to move dozens of detained Venezuelan men to facilities in Texas roughly two weeks before invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

On March 14 and 15, the men called their families to say that U.S. officials had told them they were being deported back to Venezuela, according to dozens of interviews.

But by March 16, Suárez’s wife had still not heard from him.

Her anxiety rising, she turned to Google. “Deportation to Venezuela,” she typed into the search box.

By now, three flights carrying the 238 men had arrived in El Salvador, despite a judge’s order that the Trump administration turn them around.

Online, Suárez’s wife pulled up an image of a sea of shaved, cuffed men in the Salvadoran prison. She recognized one: It was her husband.

Holding her newborn, she sat down and cried.

Later, she logged in to an online ICE search page that had allowed her to track her husband’s whereabouts in the United States.

Suárez had suddenly disappeared from the system.