Francisco García Casique

THE BARBER WHO VANISHED: HOW ICE TURNED A VENEZUELAN HAIRCUT INTO A CRIMINAL ACT

Francisco García Casique was cutting hair in Longview, Texas when the United States government decided he was a national security threat.

Twenty-four years old. A Venezuelan immigrant. No criminal record. No gang affiliations. Just scissors, tattoos, and a soft voice behind the chair at a Marvel-themed barbershop where he built a new life after arriving in December 2023.

He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t fleeing anything except the collapse of a homeland. He checked in regularly with ICE, kept his paperwork clean, and dreamed of opening his own shop one day. Instead, he vanished into a legal black hole — not because of what he’d done, but because of what he looked like.

THE TATTOOS THAT TERRORIZED ICE

Francisco had tattoos. Religious ones. One read: “God gives His toughest battles to His strongest warriors.” He shared it with his brother Sebastián — a sign of faith, not affiliation. But to ICE under Donald Trump’s second term, a tattoo is a gang membership card, and a Venezuelan accent is probable cause.

So on March 15, 2025, during a routine ICE check-in, Francisco was detained without warning, stripped of his rights, and tossed into a fast-tracked deportation process with no lawyer and no due process.

He thought he was going home. He’d signed paperwork to be returned to Venezuela. But that’s not where ICE sent him.

They sent him to El Salvador.

A PRISON BUILT FOR THE CAMERAS

El Salvador’s CECOT isn’t a detention center. It’s a showpiece — a concrete stage for President Nayib Bukele’s war-on-gangs theater, where prisoners are paraded half-naked and shackled for viral footage. And that’s exactly where Francisco was frog-marched, chained, and shaved — not because of evidence, but because the optics worked.

His family didn’t get a call. They got a video.

Bukele released the footage himself: detainees kneeling, rows of shaved heads, bodies bent and arms shackled — a perverse victory lap for Bukele’s war on crime. Francisco’s mother spotted him instantly. She recognized his tattoos. His build. His broken face. That’s how she learned her son was no longer in the U.S. — not from ICE, but from Salvadoran propaganda.

THE ALIEN ENEMIES ACT: TRUMP’S NEW DEPORTATION TOOLKIT

Francisco’s deportation wasn’t just cruel. It was unconstitutional. Trump’s administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act — a law from 1798 written during a panic about French spies — to mass-deport Venezuelan immigrants without trials, hearings, or appeals.

In this warped framework, ICE doesn’t need charges. It doesn’t need evidence. It needs a hunch and a rubber stamp.

Francisco was one of the first. He won’t be the last.

A BARBER, A GHOST, A HUMAN BEING

Francisco remains in CECOT. No charges. No lawyer. No trial. No phone calls. Just a name on a list and a body in a prison built for spectacle. His barbershop chair in Longview is empty. His family pleads with human rights groups. His name, briefly in the headlines, fades into the white noise of mass injustice.

But make no mistake: Francisco’s case is the prototype. A lawful resident vanished under the pretense of “public safety.” A family notified by viral footage instead of a phone call. A person rendered disposable because he fit the image of fear.

This is not immigration enforcement. It’s political theater soaked in cruelty.

And every time we look away, we’re letting them cast the next barber.

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