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It was March 13 when Nedizon Alejandro Leon Rengel called his brother Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel to wish him a happy birthday.
Alejandro never heard back from him. Federal agents detained Adrián on his way to his job at a Dallas barbershop.
For the next five weeks, Alejandro has searched for Adrián, trying to learn where he was: deported to another country? Held in an immigration facility in the United States?
He and Adrián’s live-in girlfriend called Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, getting shifted from office to office with different responses.
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Sometimes they were told Adrián was still in detention. Another time they were told that he had been deported back to “his country of origin,” El Salvador, even though Adrián is Venezuelan. (Alejandro provided NBC News with audio recordings of the calls.)
Their mother went to a detention center in Caracas, Venezuela, where deportees are held when they arrive from the United States, Alejandro said, but she was told no one by her son’s name was there.
They enlisted the help of advocacy groups. Cristosal, a nonprofit organization in El Salvador working with families of presumed deportees to get answers from the U.S. and Salvadoran governments, had no answers. Same with the League of United Latin American Citizens, known as LULAC.
Alejandro’s 6-year-old niece asked him almost every day: When will her dad call her?
“For 40 days, his family has been waiting to hear his fate,” LULAC CEO Juan Proaño said.
Finally, on Tuesday, an answer. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed to NBC News that Adrián had, in fact, been deported — to El Salvador.
The news “saddens me a lot” and “shattered me,” Alejandro said after he heard about his brother’s whereabouts from NBC News.
DHS didn’t respond when it was asked whether Adrián was sent to CECOT, the mega-prison in El Salvador. But Alejandro fears that’s the case, given the many Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT from Texas a few days after he was detained.
“There, [El Salvador President Nayib] Bukele says demons enter their hell,” Alejandro said about the prison, speaking on the phone from the restaurant where he works. “And my brother is not a criminal. At this moment, I don’t feel very good. The news has hit me like a bucket of cold water.”
The Rengel family’s experience echoes the experiences of others who have encountered the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts — sometimes their family members seemingly disappear after having been taken by immigration authorities.
The administration has prioritized deporting men alleged to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which it has designated as a foreign terrorist organization under the 1700s-era wartime Alien Enemies Act.
“Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, entered our country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren De Aragua,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News by email. “Tren de Aragua is vicious gang that rapes, maims, and murders for sport. President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem will not allow foreign terrorist enemies to operate in our country and endanger Americans. They will always put the safety of the American people first.”
Asked for details and documents supporting DHS’ allegations of criminality, McLaughlin responded: “We aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one. That would be insane.”
Adrian’s family denies he is a member of the gang.
“For me, it’s a forced disappearance, because he’s not communicating with anyone, they’re not permitting him a right to anything, and they’re not giving him a right to a defense — from what I understand, here we’re all innocent until it’s proved contrary,” Alejandro said.
“Then the only offense we have here is to be a migrant and be Venezuelan, and now the government has turned against this nationality,” he said, adding the government believes “we all belong to Tren de Aragua.”
Adrián, 27, came to the United States in 2023 by appointment through the CBP One app. Alejandro provided NBC News a photo of a printout confirming his brother’s June 12, 2023, appointment.
Adrián had also applied for temporary protected status, according to a Dec. 1, 2024, document from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of DHS that handles immigration benefits.
In November, Adrián’s car wasn’t working, so he got a ride with a co-worker, Alejandro said. Police in Irving, Texas, stopped the co-worker, who had outstanding traffic violations, and detained them both after they found a marijuana trimmer in the co-worker’s vehicle, Alejandro said.
Police charged Adrián with a Class C misdemeanor of possession of drug paraphernalia, punishable by up to a $500 fine.
“I don’t know why that charge was leveled against him, because first, it wasn’t his car,” said Alejandro, 32. “Second, the belongings in the car were not his.”
Documents provided by Alejandro show Adrián pleaded guilty/no contest — the document doesn’t specify which he pleaded — and was fined $492. Alejandro said his brother was paying the fine in monthly installments.
Adrián had a crown tattoo with the initial “Y,” the first letter of his ex-wife’s name, on his hand, Alejandro said. When he was arrested in November, officers told him they were linking him to Tren de Aragua “because of that tattoo,” Alejandro said.
That’s why he later covered it with a tiger tattoo, Alejandro said. ICE has pointed to tattoos, including those of a crown, as indicators of membership in Tren de Aragua. Adrián also has a tattoo of his mother’s name on one of his biceps.
“We are not criminal people. We are people who studied professions in Venezuela. We had careers; we’re not people who are linked with any of that,” said Alejandro, who had jobs in banking and insurance in Venezuela and other Latin American countries but now works at a restaurant.
Adrián graduated from high school in Venezuela with a focus on science, Alejandro said, later taking a barber course amid the country’s dismal economy.
Adrián emigrated to Colombia with his then-wife and daughter and worked there for a several years. When the area became unsafe, he moved his wife and daughter back to Venezuela and then went to Mexico and applied for a CBP One appointment to enter the United States.
Adrián came to the United States “because we all know the political, social and economic situation in Venezuela” and he wanted to make enough money to buy his daughter a house back home, Alejandro said.
Before he got confirmation that his brother was in El Salvador, Alejandro said, he would sometimes get on his knees and pray. “I’ve had moments where I think ‘at any moment he’s going to call’ and then moments when I’m shattered and I don’t know what to do.”
“I never, ever thought I would go through a situation like this,” he said, adding that the only thing he thought would happen when he came to the United States himself as a migrant was that “they either give you asylum or they deport you. Not a forced disappearance.”