Jesús Escalona Mújicas, a 48-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker, says he was en route to work at a construction site on the morning of April 9 when a group of immigration agents and state and federal police officers stopped his car in a rural area near Bryan—an event that led to him being arrested, publicly accused of membership in a transnational prison gang, and deported.

According to a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) arrest report, the officers were with DPS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE). Escalona Mújicas told the Texas Observer that one of the agents said he had an outstanding deportation order, a claim he disputed by saying he had temporary permission to be here and a pending asylum case. (ICE, via a spokesperson, maintains that he “had no immigration benefits that prevented his arrest and removal.”) 

But the details of any immigration case didn’t seem to matter. In an interview, Escalona Mújicas said he was told he’d been targeted under an 18th-century law being revived by the Trump Administration—the Alien Enemies Act. Agents then took him to a gas station parking lot where he was accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization.

That same day, ICE issued a press release announcing Escalona Mújicas’s arrest and calling him a “documented Tren de Aragua gang member,” accompanied by a photo of him wearing a camouflage John Deere sweatshirt, silver handcuffs, and a wide-eyed expression. 

But reporting by the Observer casts doubt on ICE’s claim. Days after the arrest, Oswaldo Azuaje, a friend, helped start a social media campaign in Venezuela in an attempt to clear Escalona Mújica’s name: “He has never been imprisoned or had a criminal record. His life has always been marked by hard work and integrity. He has no connection to the Tren de Aragua case,” Azuaje wrote. In mid-July, the Observer reached Escalona Mújicas in Venezuela by phone, and he recalled being shocked by the allegation. “Me? A gang member? I’m a person with good conduct,” he said. A father of two teen girls, he said he’d never heard of Tren de Aragua until after his arrival in Texas.

Before emigrating, Escalona Mújicas worked for the same employer, Empresas Polar, a Venezuelan Pepsi affiliate, for nearly two decades. He has no criminal history or record of gang activity in Texas and only traffic tickets in Venezuela, according to a search of U.S. and Venezuelan public records and interviews. In an interview, another Venezuelan friend and former neighbor, María Iriza Mendoza, rejected the gang accusation, calling him a “very hard-working man.” Back in Venezuela, she said, “He didn’t even have vices.”

In March, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation declaring that Tren de Aragua was invading the United States and invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a war-time law that his administration is using to fast-track expatriations—without due process—of immigrants accused of belonging to criminal gangs. Venezuelans, who arrived in large numbers in recent years and in many cases received Biden-era temporary protections, have been singled out as a target for Trump’s aggressively anti-immigrant policies.

The same month, the administration flew more than 200 Venezuelans to a megaprison in El Salvador—the majority of whom had no criminal records. One man was misidentified, perhaps due to a mixup with another person whose photo appeared in a Texas gang database. U.S. authorities have used tattoos and clothing items to determine Tren de Aragua membership, although experts told the Observer that these can’t be used as reliable indicators. Escalona Mújicas has no tattoos. 

Police body camera footage obtained by the Texas Observer only shows a portion of the traffic stop and Escalona Mújicas’ arrest.

But it’s clear from the recordings that the ambush was planned. In his recording, DPS officer Erik Zani said: “He’s on his way. We’re probably 300 yards behind him. He’s just driving real slow, like he did the other day. He’s still coming down to approach that four-way stop. He should be getting there any minute now.” Seconds later, sirens go off.

By Escalona Mújicas’ account, before he opened his car door at the traffic stop, an agent told him “the President does not want to see Haitians, Nicaraguans, Cubans, or Venezuelans here.” The Observer could not obtain footage of that conversation.

At least five police cars and seven officers surrounded Escalona Mújicas, according to footage recorded by three DPS officers. A minute after sirens sounded, Escalona Mújicas was pressed against his car with his hands behind his back and illuminated only by red and blue police emergency lights, video shows.

One of the arresting officers was DPS Special Agent Garrett Burkhart, who had been specifically requested to assist FBI and ICE “with the apprehension of a TREN DE ARAGUA gang member,” according to a DPS arrest report. That report wrongly identified Escalona Mujica’s nationality–identifying him as “an alien of El Salvadorian origin without legal status in the United States.” 

Escalona Mújicas is Venezuelan rather than Salvadoran, according to public records, a press release from ICE, and Escalona Mújicas himself.

Burkhart watched as other agents detained Escalona Mújicas, videos show. 

“You have an order for arrest with the immigration,” another agent told Escalona Mújicas in Spanish. “Do you understand? Do you understand? What is your complete name?” 

Burkhart then walks away as other officers handcuffed him. “Cameras off!” another yelled, and the recording ends. 

Agents then escorted Escalona Mújicas to a gas station, where they interviewed him and accused him of having gang ties, he said. (In response to a records request, DPS said that although an agent was present in the interview, they did not have a recording.)

The Observer shared the details of Escalona Mújicas’ case, including the DPS arrest report, with experts who said they doubted ICE and DPS had targeted the right individual. “To be totally frank, it sounds like they fucked up,” said Mike LaSusa, deputy director of content and an investigative researcher at InSight Crime, a think tank and newsroom that has researched and reported on Tren de Aragua. LaSusa noted specifically that DPS misidentified Escalona Mújicas as Salvadoran. “This isn’t an indication of strong intelligence work, if they can’t get the guy’s nationality right.”

The DPS report itself also states that Escalona Mújicas did not appear in TxGANG, Texas’ problem-plagued gang database: “While sufficient criteria was not available to document ESCALONA MUJICAS as a gang member in TXGANG, SA Burkhart was advised that the United States Attaché in Guatemala had documented ESCALONA MUJICAS as a TREN DE ARAGUA gang member.” 

Escalona Mújicas told the Observer he passed through Guatemala briefly en route from Venezuela to Texas. While on a bus migrating through the country, he explained, U.S. and Guatemalan authorities stopped him and a few others, plucking them out of a group of passengers at a checkpoint in Coatepeque, a town roughly 20 miles from the Mexican border. (Escalona Mújicas did not recall which agency the U.S. authorities worked with; he said they wore uniforms with U.S. flags, and appeared to be soldiers.)

The other men selected from the group, Escalona Mújicas noted, had tattoos of trains, crowns, or Air Jordan sneakers.

Authorities took his ID and passport information, collected his fingerprints, and photographed him and his Air Jordans—which they claimed were a symbol of gang membership, he said.

Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council, expressed surprise at DPS’s use of overseas intelligence from a U.S. attaché—a federal official who’s assigned to a foreign diplomatic mission or embassy—to try to designate someone in the United States as a gang member. She was also alarmed by the incorrect nationality in the DPS report. “It appears that almost everything about this report is false. So, who knows whether that was intentionally so, or just due to sloppy police work,” Etter said. 

The FBI and DPS did not respond to Observer requests for comment. When asked about proof of Escalona Mújicas’ gang affiliation, ICE spokesperson Tim Oberle provided a statement “Attributable to a Senior DHS Official” that said Escalona Mújicas had entered the country illegally and had an active order of removal. (The Observer was unable to verify Escalona Mújicas’ claims to the contrary; U.S. immigration court records are not public, and he said he  left those documents in the car at the time of his arrest.) 

The ICE statement continued: “We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and 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.”

During his month in ICE detention, loved ones feared he’d be sent to CECOT, the megaprison in El Salvador. “My mom, my dad, everyone was going around scared. My brother, my sister, my nephew, you have no idea,” he said. 

Escalona Mújicas was deported to Venezuela on May 1, according to ICE. In an interview, he recalled sharing a plane with 300 others, all in shackles. It had been almost three years since he’d been laid off from his job as a forklift operator at Empresas Polar, the Pepsi affiliate, leading him on his journey through the treacherous Darien Gap, across Central America, and eventually to Texas. 

When he spoke to the Observer in mid-July, he said he was preparing to emigrate again: this time, to Spain, a country that has fewer immigration restrictions for Venezuelans. In mid-August, Escalona Mújicas spoke to the Observer again by phone—this time from Madrid, where he began a new construction gig this week. 

Even though ICE has refused to provide information to substantiate its claims, experts including Etter from the Texas Immigration Law Council said the consequences of the press release labelling him as a gang member could last. 

“That could be an issue that could follow him, really, the rest of his life.”

Valentina Lares and Laura Weffer of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project contributed to this report.

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