Jerce Reyes Barrios didn’t flee justice. He fled torture.
A Venezuelan soccer coach. A Real Madrid superfan. A man with no criminal record. No weapons. No aliases. Just asylum papers — and a tattoo.
The tattoo? A crown. A soccer ball. The word Dios. A tribute to his faith, his sport, his country.
Not a gang emblem. A life emblem.
But to ICE? That was enough.
They claimed it “resembled gang symbology.” They pointed to a photo where Jerce raised his hand in what they insisted was a coded sign.
It was the ASL sign for “I love you.”
The kids he coached knew it. His wife knew it. ICE didn’t care.
No hearing. No trial. No judge. No chance.
They yanked him from the asylum system like a weed in the dark and deported him on March 15, 2025 — straight to El Salvador.
That’s where he disappeared.
Jerce Reyes Barrios is now locked inside CECOT — the sprawling mega-prison built to house cartel leaders, contract killers, and gang enforcers.
He is none of those. He coached kids in soccer and signed “I love you” with his hands.
Now he wears chains.
In CECOT, prisoners sleep on bare concrete under 24-hour lights. They are marched like cattle, heads down, wrists zip-tied. They’re denied lawyers. Denied visitors. Denied names.
And that’s where ICE sent him.
A soccer coach. A father. A husband. A man.
No one has heard from him since.
Not his wife. Not his lawyer, Linette Tobin. Not the embassy. Not the kids he coached.
His family fears he’s been tortured — or worse.
His wife can’t sleep. His children still ask when he’s coming home.
ICE doesn’t return their calls.
They call it a “legal removal.”
We call it what it is: a state-sanctioned disappearance.
This wasn’t a deportation. It was a rendition — wrapped in paperwork, rubber-stamped by cowards, and carried out by the same agency that separates children, cages the innocent, and shrugs when bodies vanish.
And this is not a mistake. It is a pattern.
ICE has deported veterans. Deported cancer patients. Deported people into active war zones.
They’ve sent mothers to their deaths and fathers to their graves — all under the cold camouflage of “enforcement.”
Jerce is just the latest casualty.
The law didn’t fail him.
ICE executed it.
And we will not let them bury that truth with him.
Say his name.
Tell this story.
Because Jerce Reyes Barrios is not a gang member. He’s not a criminal.
He’s a missing man. And this country made him disappear.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.