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A 19-year-old Venezuelan living in New York City was arrested by federal immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite officers realizing he was the wrong target, according to his family.

Bronx teenager Merwil Gutierrez was among more than 200 other Venezuelans deported from the U.S. to a Salvadoran prison under President Donald Trump ’s use of the Alien Enemies Act , which labeled alleged Tren de Aragua gang members “alien enemies” who can be summarily removed from the country.

Gutierrez has no criminal history or gang ties, his family and attorney told Documented , an immigration-focused nonprofit news outlet in New York.

“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” the elder Gutierrez told Documented .

“I feel like my son was kidnapped,” he told the outlet.

Immigration attorney William Parra with Inmigracin Al Día told Documented that “Merwil was detained for hanging out with friends and was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“ICE was not looking for him, nor is there any evidence whatsoever that Merwil was in any gang,” he added.

The Independent has requested comment from ICE.

“It is unconscionable that Trump is usurping due process — and our justice system entirely — to disappear people to the CECOT torture camp in El Salvador,” New York Immigration Coalition president Murad Awawdeh told The Independent.

“A New Yorker who was never charged with a crime was one of the people that Trump disappeared to CECOT, separating him from his loving family,” he added. “Merwil Gutierrez must be immediately released and returned to New York. At the federal, state and local level, all New York elected officials must stop turning a blind eye to this atrocity.”

The family made the arduous journey from Venezuela to seek asylum in the United States in 2023.

“The Gutierrez family entered the United States legally as asylum seekers from Venezuela, only to be subjected to the same type of authoritarian cruelty they fled from,” New York state Senator Gustavo Rivera said in a statement.

“Merwil Gutierrez has been disappeared by the American government to a prison in El Salvador, thousands of miles from anywhere close to home for him,” he added. “The blatant racial profiling, the disrespect for due process, and the daylight kidnapping of Merwil by ICE is appalling and intolerable, and should be a cause for alarm for all Americans. The administration must right their wrong.”

The report of his arrest and removal from the country comes as the Trump administration faces intense legal scrutiny for the wrongful removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia , a Salvadoran father living in Maryland.

Abrego Garcia has spent more than a month inside the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center despite a court order that prevents his removal from the United States for humanitarian reasons. He fled the country as a teenager and was a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland, where he has been living with his wife and 5-year-old child, both U.S. citizens. The couple is also raising two other children from a previous relationship.

The White House and government attorneys have repeatedly admitted that his removal was due to an “administrative error.” But officials are refusing to seek his return and are fighting in court to continue his imprisonment as an alleged member of MS-13, which is designated a foreign terrorist organization. Administration officials argue that supersedes any court order against his removal.

Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to “facilitate” his “release from custody in El Salvador,” noting that officials agreed sending him there was “illegal.”

On Thursday, a three-judge federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., said the “government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”