After being deported to El Salvador, Venezuelan immigrant who once lived in East Texas returns home
Published 5:40 am Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Francisco Garcia Casique knew he faced deportation after he failed to show up to an immigration hearing in February. What the man who once called Longview home didn’t know is he would be sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
Months later, the 24-year-old Casique, who came to the U.S. illegally in 2023 to help support his family, is back in his native Venezuela. He was one of more than 200 detainees at the El Salvadorian facility released in July as part of an exchange between the U.S. and Venezuelan governments.
For months, Casique’s mother, Mirelys Casique, participated in marches in Venezuela and spoke to U.S. media outlets in hopes to be reunited with her son. Now, she said she thanks God that he is back with her.
“Many of those who echoed the complaints helped us during those four months, always asking and pleading with us to hear from (the detainees),” Mirelys said recently by phone. “We went 128 days without hearing their voices, and it was a team effort. Many helped us accomplish this great miracle.”
Casique’s mother told many news outlets that her son never had a criminal background in Venezuela, and she believes immigration officials discriminated against her son because of his tattoos.
As previously reported, Mirelys believes her son was mistaken for someone else.
“How could they have not realized that mistake? How could they not see that the photo that was in the archives is not the same one of my son?” she said. “How could they not have realized that?
“When my son arrived, and I got him back and listening to what he lived through… you can’t imagine — it’s like a mixture of feelings, my joy (to see him), my pain as a mother, my sadness because I wished I was the one in that place instead of my son, because he didn’t deserve everything they did to him there,” she said.
Francisco, who worked as a barber in Longview, said he is still processing the changes he has endured for the past months. He said he is happy to be reunited again.
“I feel very happy to be able to hug my mom … my sisters and my grandma. I feel like I was born again and blessed to be in my mother’s arms,” he said through text message.
Francisco said he hopes people’s view on immigration changes.
“There are honest migrants who have honorable values and just want an opportunity,” he said.
As he moves forward, he said all he wants to do is heal from his experiences in El Salvador.
“I thank God for taking me out of that place,” he said.