Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, a Venezuelan national, was unlawfully detained, repeatedly denied due process, falsely imprisoned, and ultimately removed from the United States and sent to one of the world’s harshest prisons in El Salvador last year. Today, he filed a federal lawsuit describing a sweeping, dangerous pattern of misconduct by the Trump administration. He is seeking at least $1.3 million in damages and is represented by Democracy Defenders Fund and Mariziani, Stevens & Gonzalez PLLC.

The lawsuit describes Mr. Rengel’s harrowing story. On March 13, 2025, ICE unlawfully detained Mr. Rengel, who entered the United States in 2023 and had a pending immigration case. Two days later, immigration officials put him on an El Salvador-bound plane but told him he was being deported to his home country of Venezuela. The complaint details how federal officials raced to get the deportation flight airborne and migrants off the plane in El Salvador before courts could stop them. Mr. Rengel seeks to hold the federal government accountable for his injuries arising from the systematic denial of his due process, as well as from directives by senior federal officials to defy court orders. These unlawful acts led to four months of torture and unjustified imprisonment.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleges that high-ranking Trump administration officials orchestrated an unlawful scheme to punish Venezuelan immigrants, use El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) as a tool of deterrence, deny immigrants due process, and act in knowing defiance of a federal court order.

"This case reveals an illegal and morally bereft plan of action at the highest levels of our government to defy a federal court, strip a man of his rights, and hand him over to a foreign government for torture to prove a political point," said Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. "Adrián Rengel spent four months in abhorrent, inhumane conditions because senior officials chose to flout the rule of law. We are filing suit today to get justice for him. The rule of law applies no matter what the political aims of the Administration.”

The only justification offered for Mr. Rengel's detainment were his tattoos, which bear the names of his mother and daughter, the complaint notes. Immigration officials alleged the tattoos indicated membership in the Tren de Aragua gang. He denied the allegation, but never received a hearing.

"What happened to Adrián Rengel is government-sanctioned torture and a failure to recognize his humanity because he happened to be an immigrant. He deserves his day in court," said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which assisted DDF with Mr. Rengel’s claim. "His four months of illegal confinement is the devastating outcome of a system designed to treat Latino immigrants as criminals simply because of where they were born or the color of their skin. Rengel and others were stripped of due process, lied to about where they were being sent, and handed over to a foreign dictatorship to be tortured in America's name. The United States government had the power to stop this, and they chose not to. The court should deliver the justice the executive branch intentionally denied him."

The government did not secure Mr. Rengel's release until July 2025, when he was returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap, which demonstrates the United States always had the ability and authority to send him home, the claim states.

The case is Leon Rengel v. United States. The lawsuit seeks at least $1.3 million in damages for false imprisonment, abuse of process, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It names the United States as the sole defendant, holding it responsible for the actions of its agents at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, and the White House.

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Democracy Defenders Fund brings together a nonpartisan team to work with national, state and local allies across the country to defend in real-time the foundations of our democracy.