Trump’s New Tactic: Erasing Venezuelan Asylum Seekers from U.S. Legal System
The administration is quietly dismissing asylum cases of deported Venezuelans, ensuring no legal path back to the U.S., advocates warn.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has begun quietly shutting down asylum cases of Venezuelan deportees: effectively erasing their presence from the U.S. legal system. The move, legal advocates say, is designed not just to deport, but to ensure there is no road back.
The practice came into focus with the case of Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist who had been seeking asylum in the United States. Without warning, Hernandez was deported under wartime powers to El Salvador, where he is now believed to be imprisoned in CECOT — the country’s notorious supermax facility better known for its secrecy and abuse than any semblance of due process.
But it’s what happened next that’s raised the stakes: Hernandez’s asylum case, still pending in U.S. immigration court, was summarily dismissed by a judge in San Diego. According to legal observers, his is one of at least 14 such dismissals in recent weeks.
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For attorneys, this is a clear signal: the Trump administration is moving beyond physical deportation. It’s erasing these individuals from the legal record, ensuring they have no remaining ties — and no return path — to the United States.
“It seems the government’s intention in dismissing these cases across the country is to complete the disappearance of people to El Salvador, to end their legal proceedings, and to act as though they weren’t here seeking asylum in the first place,” said Lindsay Toczylowski of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who represents Hernandez.
The legal term is “dismissal without prejudice.” But in practice, for someone trapped in a foreign prison and cut off from communication, it’s a lock on a door that may never be reopened.
Deportation by Legal Vanishing
The key to the strategy lies in timing. Most of the deported Venezuelans, like Hernandez, had active asylum claims pending in court. Under normal circumstances, deportation without a court hearing would violate due process. But on March 15, citing the Alien Enemies Act — a rarely used 18th-century wartime statute — President Trump ordered the mass removal of 268 Venezuelan men to El Salvador.
No hearings. No attorney notifications. No chance to be heard.
The rationale? National security. The reality? Many of the deportees were LGBTQ+, political dissidents, or simply migrants seeking refuge from a collapsing state.
What came next was even more alarming: As attorneys scrambled to stabilize their clients’ cases post-deportation, immigration judges — particularly in California and Texas — began granting government requests to dismiss the cases entirely.
“We don’t want these cases dismissed, because that pulls them out of the court process entirely,” said Michelle Brané, executive director of Together and Free, which has been tracking the dismissals.
And with the men now held incommunicado inside CECOT, they have no way to speak with their lawyers or challenge their detention. Even federal judges’ orders to establish contact have been ignored, raising fresh questions about constitutional crisis territory.
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Legal Limbo at the Edge of Empire
Hernandez’s case is emblematic. After months in San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, he believed he was nearing a decision on his asylum claim. His legal team had built a case centered on anti-gay persecution and political retaliation in Venezuela — a country where both are endemic.
Instead, he was forcibly removed, put on a flight to El Salvador, and deposited into one of the world’s most secretive and brutal prisons — designed for gang leaders, not asylum seekers.
Hernandez is now the lead plaintiff in a major ACLU lawsuit against the administration. The suit argues that Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport non-criminal, asylum-seeking individuals is unlawful, and that detaining them at U.S. expense in a foreign prison with no legal representation is tantamount to extrajudicial exile.
“He didn’t leave voluntarily — he was practically kidnapped. And he never got a chance to defend himself,” said Reina Cardenas, a close friend of Hernandez now advocating for his release.
The order dismissing his case states it could be reopened if he returns to the U.S. But how can he return, when he has no passport, no access to communication, and no country willing to intervene?
A Disappearance Policy in Plain Sight
To immigrant advocates, this pattern represents a new frontier in deterrence: exile without trace. It’s not enough to deport people; the administration wants to shut every legal window they might one day climb back through.
While Trump’s first term tested legal boundaries with mass detentions and child separations, his second term seems more focused on systemic dismantling — removing not just bodies, but rights and records.
As of now, ICE has refused to comment on the dismissals. So has the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Silence, in this case, may be the policy.
For attorneys, the next step is appeals — to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and possibly higher courts. But those moves are hamstrung by the same barriers: clients who can’t be reached, governments who won’t cooperate, and a court system increasingly willing to look away.
For the deportees, the consequences are immediate and terrifying. For the rest of the immigration system, it’s a warning: disappearance can now be court-ordered.
