Attorneys for a Venezuelan detainee who is currently imprisoned in a notorious Salvadoran prison filed a habeas petition on Wednesday, asking a federal judge to order the immediate release of their client.
Instead of deporting Edicson David Quintero Chacon to Venezuela, the government is “paying” for his “torture in El Salvador with U.S. taxpayer dollars in flagrant violation of the United States Constitution,” his attorneys said in the filing.
According to the habeas petition, on June 13, 2024, Quintero Chacon went to his routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in North Carolina where he was detained and taken into custody and transferred to a detention center in Georgia. Then, in September 2024, an immigration judge ordered him removed from the U.S. to Venezuela.
On February 10, 2025, he filed a habeas petition challenging his detention in Georgia, saying he “was not fighting [his] case anymore” and that he “just wanted to go home.”
A month later, after being transferred to a detention center in Texas, Quintero Chacon was put on one of the first flights to El Salvador with more than a hundred other Venezuelan migrants.
“Mr. Quintero’s continuing detention—now approaching a year—is lawless,” his attorneys said in the petition. “There is no statutory authority that could possibly justify his continued custody under or by color of the authority of the U.S. government, let alone at CECOT.”
The government’s decision to transfer Quintero Chacon to CECOT, his attorneys said, “will amount to an effective life sentence—and possibly a death sentence.”
Quintero Chacon’s attorneys said in the filing that he has not been charged with or convicted of a crime in any country.
“He is a loving husband, father of two small children, brother, and son, and a skilled carpenter and fisherman,” his attorneys said in the petition.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the habeas petition and questions about Quintero Chacon.
In a 5-4 decision earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act, but said detainees must be given due process to challenge their removal.
Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union said on Wednesday they plan to refile more than a hundred habeas claims in Washington for the men who were deported on March 15.
