SO MUCH OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S mass deportation policy hinges on the word “criminals.”

Most Americans agree that real criminals in the country illegally are bad and should be deported.

Where the administration has outrun the public is in the matter of who is considered a criminal. When Trump’s term began, they said the focus was on “public safety threats and national security threats”—the most serious risks. But a week later, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said all undocumented immigrants swept up in raids qualified because they “illegally broke our nation’s laws, and therefore they are criminals, as far as this administration goes.”

By the letter of the law, merely being in the country as an undocumented immigrant is not a crime.

The issue has returned to the center of public attention thanks to a controversial new effort to send Venezuelans illegally in America to Guantánamo Bay.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared the initial group of men flown to the military base on Cuba during the first week of February to be “the worst of the worst”; U.S. officials claimed all were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, whose notoriety the Trump administration has worked hard to inflate.

But a review by the Washington Post of the records of six of the men found that three did not have criminal histories beyond illegal entry. ProPublica identified another detainee without a criminal record. And the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has now sued the government on behalf of plaintiffs who include the sister of one of the detainees.

“Taking immigrants off U.S. soil and sending them to Guantánamo is a stunning development, even for this administration,” Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told The Bulwark. “We must have access to them.”

The situation at Gitmo is a microcosm of the larger immigration debate in Washington, in which a chaotic scramble to mass deport those in the country illegally means the administration is painting people in far different situations with an overly broad brush. Much of this haziness and controversy is captured in the story one of the detainees now in Guantánamo: Mayfreed Durán-Arape.

Durán-Arape, 21, was detained more than eighteen months ago after trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States twice. Since then, he has spoken to his mother nearly every day, she told The Bulwark.

Doris Arape, who lives in the United States with her husband, was careful with the personal information she divulged to avoid reprisal from the Trump administration. She said her son was taken into custody July 7, 2023 and had been in El Paso, Texas since then. During the first week of February, she said, she noticed a change: He became less hopeful—and then, openly suicidal—because of the way he was being treated.

During the first week of February, she received a call from one of his friends who said he had been taken in the middle of the night. She checked his location in ICE’s online locator and saw he had been sent to Florida, which fit the pattern of the men ultimately taken to Guantánamo.

Doris Arape shared a screenshot showing her son’s movement with The Bulwark, and Durán-Arape’s name later appeared on a list published by the New York Times of the men sent to Gitmo. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin confirmed his presence there to The Bulwark. “This individual remains in high level custody in Guantanamo due to a November 7, 2024 felony criminal conviction for aggravated assault,” McLaughlin said. A later Washington Post report added that he was charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding an officer during a riot at a detention center.”

But Doris Arape says the circumstances of her son’s arrest are not nearly as cut and dried as the administration claims. She claims that her son intervened to stop an officer from repeatedly hitting a friend during an altercation, and that this, in turn, led to his own criminal charge.

On December 19, a month after the incident, a judge gave a removal order for Durán-Arape. But instead of being deported from the country, he sat in detention in El Paso before ultimately being sent to Guantánamo. Durán-Arape’s lawyer during his time in El Paso did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But other attorneys in the field raised questions as to what benefit was gained by not simply deporting Durán-Arape as initially determined.

“This goes to why are you keeping someone that can be deported, why is he in Guantanamo?” asked Atlanta-based immigration lawyer Charles Kuck. “Why waste money flying him $4,000 a person on the [C-17s]?”

Kuck was referring to the military planes being used for deportation flights, which Reuters reported likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant to send to Gitmo.

“If he’s not a criminal and has nothing more than a regrettable confrontation with law enforcement, are those sufficient grounds to have someone detained in Guantánamo?” asked Leopoldo Martínez Nucete, a former member of congress in Venezuela, who co-founded the Venezuelan American Caucus. “How many people are going to be labeled as gang members under situations similar to this just to give the government a pretext to continue advancing this inhumane and xenophobic policy?”

The Trump administration, for its part, has shown no hesitation around its new Gitmo directive, going so far as to triumphantly blast out videos of law enforcement officials putting detainees in chains and boarding them on planes.

But a former DHS official noted that while it’s often difficult to parse the facts in what amounts to a ‘he said, she said’ situation for those being sent to Cuba, Durán-Arape’s case is telling. “The fact that they’re having to go to people who don’t have more hardened records speaks to the reality of the issue,” the former official said. “There isn’t capacity to deport enough people, so they’re going into gray areas now.”

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OVER THE COURSE OF SEVERAL days and multiple conversations, Doris Arape grew more despondent about the situation involving her son. Though McLaughlin asserted that there’s “a system for phone utilization to reach lawyers” at Guantánamo Bay, she could not reach him.

“I have no news,” she wrote over WhatsApp. “If you know anything about my son, please tell me.”

She said Mayfreed had been a barber in Venezuela since the age of 12, mostly enjoying putting designs of his customer’s choosing into their hair. He left Venezuela to escape a nation in crisis, and he had big dreams of what life would bring in the United States.

She said he was not involved in gang life. He preferred watching soccer.

But Durán-Arape did have a tattoo. Two of them, in fact. One was a snake on his clavicle, his mother said, a tattoo he saw on TV that he thought looked cool. He also had his mother’s name tattooed on his chest.

The U.S. government has zeroed in on tattoos as an “indicator” of gang membership, even though Tren de Aragua is not known for tattoos being linked to membership, as the Washington Post reported. Doris Arape fears that Mayfreed’s body art may have led to his deportation to Gitmo.

“My son has nothing to link him to any gang or criminal group!” she wrote, repeating what she said on the phone.

What she did notice about her son in the days leading up to his removal to Guantánamo was that he became more depressed and anxious. In one of their final phone calls, she said, he told her he was suicidal.

“‘If I keep staying here, because they’re treating me like a delinquent, I’m going to kill myself.’ This is what he told me,” she said, recalling how his voice became so low, she could barely hear it.

He added that he has never hurt, raped, or murdered anyone.

“These are the things I’m thinking about,” she said. “If my son is alive.”

“It’s injustice.”

Doris Arape is in the process of collecting documents and letters attesting Mayfreed’s good character from family members and neighbors in Venezuela in the hope that she can present them to some authority to get her son back from Cuba.

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His godmother Leidy, a teacher of 4-year-olds in Maracaibo, Venezuela, told The Bulwark that old neighbors and family members were distraught over the news.

“We as neighbors, we’re really upset with this information because we saw him grow up, we know him as a community,” she said. “We’re praying, his abuela is praying to God because this has hit us very hard, this situation. We know he’s not capable of what they’re saying and that a tattoo does not define someone.”

AT THE END OF OUR FIRST conversation, Doris Arape finally became emotional about the situation she finds herself in. It happened when I asked what her message was for President Trump.

“My message is clear, strong, and precise,” she said, her voice cracking. “My son has been treated like a delinquent even though we’ve shown him values and principles in his life. To the president, and to everyone else: My son is innocent.”

“Why is there so much xenophobia? Why is there so much bad treatment of Venezuelans?” she asked. “We’re here because of the crisis in our country. This is an injustice.”

Kuck said the use of Guantánamo Bay makes little sense as a logistical matter: There is still detention bed space available stateside. He suspects that the administration’s decision to send detained migrants there is mainly about demonstrating force, but also a willingness to go further than past administrations to make life hard for undocumented people. Conveying that message is in line with an old standby policy on the right.

“This isn’t, ‘We need more beds.’ This is ‘Let’s show people how mean we can be, and maybe we can scare people into leaving,’” Kuck said.

On Monday—just thirteen days after DHS touted images of Venezuelans being sent to Guantánamo—the agency announced a new ad campaign centered on the theme of self-deportation. A “nationwide and international multimillion-dollar” spot “warning illegal aliens to leave our country now.”

“If you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return,” Noem said in the release. “But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”

White House border czar Tom Homan once again went on the offensive against “Know Your Rights” training, a continuing preoccupation of his, this time pairing it with the right’s longstanding and somewhat discomfiting obsession with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). After boorishly calling AOC the “dumbest” congresswoman ever elected, he professed shock that any lawmaker would want to educate undocumented immigrants on the limits of ICE’s jurisdiction and authority.

AOC responded by saying Homan has nothing on her and the Fourth Amendment provides a lawful basis for her efforts to make sure people know their rights.

“This is why you fight these cowards,” she wrote. “The moment you stand up to them, they crumble.”