Analysis of: Venezuelan deportee welcomes chance of US return but fears repeat of ordeal
The Guardian | February 14, 2026
TL;DR
A federal judge orders Trump admin to let Venezuelan deportees return to fight cases after they were illegally sent to torture conditions in El Salvador. The ruling exposes how immigration enforcement serves to discipline migrant labor through spectacular violence while courts offer only partial remedy.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Historical Context
This case crystallizes the brutal intersection of immigration enforcement, carceral capitalism, and imperialist foreign policy. Luis Muñoz Pinto—an engineering student with no criminal record—was swept up in a deportation dragnet that used tattoos as gang evidence, then subjected to documented torture in El Salvador's Cecot prison. The federal judge's ruling that deportees may return to contest their cases represents a formal victory for due process, yet the material reality remains punitive: returnees will be immediately detained, forcing traumatized individuals to choose between indefinite incarceration in the US or exile. The class dimensions are stark. The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act—an 18th-century wartime provision—to frame Venezuelan migrants as an invading force rather than workers fleeing economic devastation and political repression. This legal sleight-of-hand transforms labor migration into military threat, justifying extrajudicial measures that would be unconstitutional against citizens. The White House spokesperson's framing of 'criminal illegal aliens' against 'the will of the American people' performs the ideological work of constructing migrants as an enemy class, obscuring that these are predominantly working-class people seeking survival. The state's behavior reveals a fundamental contradiction: capital requires migrant labor's flexibility and exploitability, yet the political superstructure periodically demands spectacular violence against this same population to legitimate nationalist projects. El Salvador's Bukele regime benefits materially from this arrangement—receiving payments and diplomatic leverage for warehousing US deportees under torture conditions. The judge's acknowledgment that allowing remote hearings might face 'interference by anti-American elements in Venezuela' reveals how imperial rivalry shapes even procedural justice, with migrants' bodies becoming pawns in geopolitical contests between the US and Venezuela.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Venezuelan migrant workers seeking asylum, US executive branch (Trump administration), US federal judiciary, El Salvador's authoritarian state apparatus, ACLU and civil rights attorneys, Prison guards and carceral workers
Beneficiaries: US political leadership seeking nationalist legitimacy, Bukele regime receiving US payments and diplomatic support, Private contractors in deportation logistics, Employers benefiting from disciplined, fearful migrant labor pool
Harmed Parties: Deported Venezuelan workers and their families, Broader migrant working class facing deterrence through spectacle, Venezuelan citizens under both US sanctions and domestic repression, US working class divided against international workers
The state exercises near-absolute power over non-citizen workers, with judicial oversight providing only partial and delayed remedy. The deportees exist in a legal limbo where formal rights are acknowledged but material conditions make exercising them punitive. The executive branch openly defies court orders, revealing the limits of bourgeois legal protections when they conflict with ruling class political imperatives. El Salvador operates as a subcontracted enforcement arm, allowing the US to outsource violence while maintaining deniability.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Venezuelan economic collapse driving emigration, US demand for flexible, exploitable labor, El Salvador receiving payment for detention services, Costs of deportation apparatus versus labor value extracted from migrants
Muñoz Pinto's trajectory—from engineering student to asylum seeker to food delivery worker in Colombia—illustrates how capital strips skilled workers from periphery nations through economic crisis, then relegates them to precarious service work. His labor supports family in Venezuela while generating surplus for Colombian platform companies. The threat of deportation and detention disciplines the entire migrant workforce, suppressing wages and organizing capacity. The prison-industrial complex extracts value through detention contracts while removing workers from productive circulation.
Resources at Stake: Human labor power of migrant workers, State resources spent on enforcement versus social reproduction, Political capital from anti-immigrant spectacle, El Salvador's international standing and US aid
Historical Context
Precedents: Alien Enemies Act (1798) previously used for Japanese internment, Bracero program's regulated exploitation of Mexican labor, Operation Wetback mass deportations (1954), Reagan-era Central American refugee policies, Post-9/11 expansion of immigration-security nexus
This represents the neoliberal phase's characteristic approach to migration: facilitating labor mobility for capital accumulation while criminalizing workers themselves. The invocation of an 18th-century wartime act against peacetime migrants follows a pattern of using exceptional legal frameworks to suspend normal rights. The outsourcing of detention to El Salvador mirrors broader trends of imperial core nations subcontracting violence to peripheral states—reminiscent of US support for Latin American dictatorships during the Cold War, now repackaged as 'security cooperation.'
Contradictions
Primary: Capital requires mobile, exploitable migrant labor, but the political legitimation of the state demands spectacular exclusion and punishment of those same workers. The system simultaneously pulls migrants toward economic opportunity and violently expels them to maintain nationalist consent.
Secondary: The judiciary formally upholds due process while acknowledging returnees will be detained—justice exists in form but not substance, The US condemns Venezuelan authoritarianism while sending asylum seekers to documented torture conditions, Workers flee Venezuela partly due to US sanctions, then are deported as agents of the Venezuelan state, El Salvador's 'tough on crime' image requires both advertising prison brutality and denying torture allegations
These contradictions cannot be resolved within current arrangements. The judge's ruling exposes the gap between legal rights and material conditions but cannot close it. Likely outcomes include: continued executive defiance of court orders, legislative attempts to expand deportation powers, and international normalization of extrajudicial detention. The deeper contradiction between labor mobility and national borders will persist as long as capitalism generates uneven development driving migration.
Global Interconnections
This case sits at the nexus of multiple imperial dynamics. Venezuela's economic crisis—driven partly by US sanctions, partly by domestic mismanagement—creates the migration pressure. El Salvador, historically subordinated to US interests, now markets its authoritarian 'crime-fighting' model to the imperial core, receiving payment and legitimacy for serving as a carceral warehouse. The deportees themselves are caught between rival states, with the US State Department arguing that returning them would damage 'foreign policy interests in Venezuela'—revealing how migrants' bodies become bargaining chips in geopolitical competition. The broader pattern reflects what David Harvey calls 'accumulation by dispossession'—peripheral populations are dispossessed through economic crisis, then further dispossessed of legal protections as they seek survival in core nations. The spectacle of shackled men with shaved heads serves an ideological function beyond the immediate violence: it signals to the domestic working class that there exists a population beneath them, disciplining citizen-workers while dividing international working-class solidarity.
Conclusion
Muñoz Pinto's impossible choice—return to face indefinite detention or remain in exile—illustrates how formal legal victories fail to address material conditions of state violence. The ruling class strategy of using immigration enforcement to discipline labor while generating nationalist consent will continue generating human suffering until challenged by international working-class solidarity. For those seeking systemic change, this case demonstrates why immigration cannot be addressed in isolation from imperialism, sanctions policy, and the fundamental contradiction between capital's need for mobile labor and the nation-state system. Building connections between migrant workers, organized labor in destination countries, and movements against imperialism in origin countries remains essential for any resolution that serves working-class interests rather than capital's managed mobility.
Suggested Reading
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how the state serves class interests despite formal democratic structures illuminates why courts can recognize rights violations yet remain unable to prevent state violence against migrants.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's examination of colonial violence and the psychology of dehumanization provides essential framework for understanding how the 'gang member' label transforms human beings into enemies deserving of torture.
- The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality by Jason Hickel (2017) Hickel's accessible account of how global inequality is actively produced through policy helps readers understand the economic forces driving Venezuelan emigration and the imperial relationships enabling outsourced detention.