Aurora asylum seeker from Venezuela, faces 20th birthday in El Salvador prison

AURORA | A young man from Venezuela who came to Aurora seeking asylum and his chance at the American Dream will be spending this month celebrating his 20th birthday in an El Salvador prison. 

“My friend Nixon, a 19-year-old babysitter with no criminal record in any country, is now jailed in a cage, in a country he has never been to, with no access to communicate with the outside world or his legal team,” said V Reeves, spokesperson from Housekeys Action Network Denver. “We don’t know if he is alive. His family and I have scoured the few photographs and videos and see no sign of him anywhere.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially detained Nixon Azuaje-Perez and his brother, Dixon Azuaje-Perez, after they were arrested and accused of tampering with evidence after a shooting at the apartment complex where the two brothers lived. The charge came after a July 28 shooting at the Aspen Grove Apartments on Nome Street.

The brothers and other family members came to the United States on a CBP One application, the application migrants fill out when entering the United States. They made an appointment to cross the border and sign up for an immigration hearing to seek asylum. Nixon filed for and was granted a workers’ permit application to be accepted, according to immigrant activists who helped him obtain it. 

The Sentinel previously agreed not to name Nixon’s mother nor other family members, because they fear harassment by federal officials or anti-immigrant activists.

Although Aurora police say Nixon and his brother were not involved in the shooting, they moved some of the shell casings away from their front door to avoid having the police think they were involved, according to police reports and the account of people who know him. Aurora Police officers investigating the shooting saw Nixon and his brother on video moving the shells and arrested them two days later, according to the affidavit.

“In many areas of South America, people move bullet casings or other evidence to avoid being questioned by a corrupt police force who might attempt to accuse you of the crime and to avoid being targeted by violent gang members who observe you being questioned by the police,” according to a statement from The American Friends Service Committee.

Several of his neighbors wrote letters to a county court, vouching for them after they were arrested, even though they were very afraid of being targeted themselves, according to the statement. 

One letter reads: “They are two young boys, innocent of all this that is happening; they are being blamed for crimes that they did not commit. They are young men who still wanted to get ahead and continue studying. I swear on my word and my family that they are good people who lived with me in Nome St for about 10 months, and with my hand on my heart, I ask you to do your investigations well. I am not stopping your work as police officers, but please, they are humble, hard-working people who are not guilty of absolutely anything.”

When Aurora Police posted the mugshots of those arrested after the Nome Street shooting, The brothers were labeled as suspected Tren de Aragua members of the Venezuelan prison gang. Although the Aurora Police Department later said they had no evidence either was a member of the gang, ICE kept them under that label, according to an ICE spokesperson.

“They have not been tied to TdA or any other specific gang at this time,” Sydney Edwards wrote in an email on Oct. 18, which was reconfirmed multiple times after.

Federal immigration officials have not produced any evidence of a gang affiliation.

Nixon complied with his arrest July 30, and his Adams County bail was set at $1,500, which his family paid Aug. 2, and he, and his brother, were released from jail with ankle monitors the same day. During his preliminary hearing Sep. 13, Nixon asked the judge about having it loosened because it was hurting him. 

The judge gave the brothers Commerce City court services location to get their ankle monitors adjusted and told them they could go whenever they wanted. 

Nixon took the paper with the address and put it in his wallet.

The brothers went from the courthouse directly to the address on the paper because a friend was driving them and they didn’t want to waste his time, according to Jennifer Piper, interfaith organizing director at the American Friends Service Committee’s Denver Immigrant Rights program, who also spoke to the friend who drove them.

They arrived at the Adams County probation office, as instructed, to have Nixon’s ankle monitor adjusted and were told to wait for assistance. They waited 20 minutes and were instead taken to waiting ICE officers. Both were arrested and taken to the GEO ICE detention center in Aurora.

After that, Nixon was essentially held in the ICE detention center, and Dixon was held in Adams County jail, according to county and federal records and sources. Neither county jail, Aurora police nor federal officials offered explanations why. Dixon is currently awaiting a trial hearing.

Nixon had no legal counsel because immigration hearings don’t require public defenders, like in state or municipal criminal court cases. 

“People must either hire an immigration attorney for upwards of $10,000 or represent themselves,” Piper said. “It’s a nearly impossible task to argue a complex case in a second language while being denied freedom and access to resources.”

His chances of maintaining his status in an immigration hearing without an attorney and while already detained were less than 10%, according to Piper and the ICE spokesperson.

At his second immigration hearing inside the detention center, the immigration judge asked Nixon if he would be filing for asylum. Nixon said he would not, Piper said in a statement. He was ordered removed by the immigration judge. 

“The night before his second immigration hearing without representation, Nixon told loved ones he was going to stop fighting his asylum case, knowing the judge would issue him removed,” the statement said. “He hoped that since deportation flights were not running to Venezuela, he would have time to clear his name in criminal court and then eventually be released into the US or accepted back to Venezuela or Peru.”

He didn’t appear for his March 11 Adams County court date to start a defense against what he and his attorney said were bogus Aurora police charges. His attorney, Leslie Barnicle, told Adams County Judge Jeffrey Dean Ruff that Nixon had been deported. 

The week of March 12, in the morning, Nixon called his family and said he thought he would be included in a group for deportation, the statement said. He called twice a day and later contacted family from the Rio Grande Processing Center in Texas on March 13. He told family members he had been shackled in Denver and flown to Texas. He said he was only given only a slice of bread and a 4 ounce bottle of water for the day.

Nixon was still listed on the ICE website at that time.

He called family again on March 14 in the evening. He told his family that, “at 2 a.m. they shackled us and placed us onto buses. We sat there for a long time. Finally, the buses started driving. Suddenly, the driver received a call, and we overheard them say, ‘Return to the detention center. The climate has shifted.’ We were returned here to the Rio Grande processing center.”

In early March, the Trump administration made a deal to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison about 300 alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang for one year, in one of the first instances of the Central American country taking migrants from the United States.

On March 15, the ACLU sued the government in an emergency hearing to prevent the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act with respect to immigrants broadly and to keep the government from illegally moving people to a third country’s prison. 

Four days later, family members were able to determine that Nixon was on the flight that US District Judge James Boasberg issued an order to return. The flight was already in the air, which the Trump Administration later claimed they no longer had jurisdiction over. 

Nixon’s family waited a couple of days to hear from him before the news broke that the Administration had violated a court order and flown people to a prison in El Salvador, according to the statement.

U.S. courts are still trying to determine whether the Trump administration broke any laws claiming the flight to El Salvador had already left or was unable to return after being ordered to do so by Boasberg. 

“We frantically called the Texas Rio Grande processing center, the local Colorado field office, and checked WhatsApp groups,” the statement said. “Days went by where no one would tell us anything, and we became more certain he had been illegally transferred – disappeared — to a foreign country’s notorious prison.”

The United States sent what El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele called “238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua” to El Salvador and they were immediately sent to its maximum security gang prison.

Immigrant rights groups have levied numerous complaints that federal officials have not provided proof to the public or courts that immigrant suspects are linked to any gang.

On March 17, CBS News published a list of names, and Nixon’s name was on the list. 

“We all collectively grieved together at the time he was detained,” V Reeves, spokesperson from Housekeys Action Network Denver said. “The pain from knowing something so atrocious could happen to such a soft soul is unbearable most days.”

A central outstanding question about the deportees’ status is when and how they could ever be released from the prison, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, as they are not serving sentences. They no longer appear in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador.

The Trump administration refers to them as the “worst of the worst” but hasn’t identified who was deported or provided evidence that they’re gang members.

The U.S. government has acknowledged that many do not have such records.

El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office and Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights and Freedom of Expression did not respond to requests from the Associated Press for comment about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners.

Nixon is described as a young man with a good education, Piper said, sending testimonies to the Sentinel from family and friends, including her own experience of knowing him. 

“He is respectful and likes to play soccer with his friends,” Piper said. “He often spends his time working because he is very responsible. He is always looking out for his younger siblings. He is sensitive, honest and honorable in everything he does. He has a dream to study more and loves to learn. He has aspirations for a good future for himself.” 

Many people, including Piper and his family, said children are fond of him and he makes time to play with them and be a good leader. They also said he is very religious and deeply believes in God, often praying for the good of himself, his family and the world.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.