Luis Leonardo Finol Marquez sat in the immigration detention facility in Aurora late last month while his wife gave birth to their first son. Now, following his recent deportation, he’s thousands of miles away from them in his home country of Venezuela.
“I wanted to see my son’s birth,” Finol Marquez told The Denver Post in Spanish through a translator. But his detention made that impossible.
The Post interviewed Finol Marquez, 28, when he was detained at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora and again after he was forcibly returned to Venezuela, seeking to understand the removal process from his perspective.
His account of his processing before deportation included an assertion that, under pressure, he unwittingly signed a document admitting to being a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, which he said wasn’t true.
When asked on April 3 — the day before he was deported — why Finol Marquez had been detained, ICE said it was because he was an “illegal alien” but declined to share information on where he was being deported to and when he was scheduled to be removed. Later, ICE did not directly respond to questions about the document cited by Finol Marquez.
Finol Marquez’s deportation means his wife Ariagnny, two daughters and one infant son are left in Lakewood, wondering what’s next. Ariagnny, 31, declined to use her last name out of a fear that she’ll be deported, too. She has applied for asylum in the U.S.
“I’m here with my three kids,” she said in Spanish. “I have no financial support.”
The exact numbers of recent detentions and deportations under President Donald Trump’s stepped-up enforcement operations remain unclear due to a lack of federal transparency. Confirmation of the whereabouts of deportees has been piecemeal, with advocacy groups, lawyers and news organizations sporadically releasing names and locations based on available information.
Recently, local immigration assistance organizations and a report by CBS News confirmed that Nixon Azuaje-Perez, a Venezuelan migrant teen living in Colorado, was sent to an El Salvadoran prison. More than 200 migrants — many of them Venezuelan — have been transported to a maximum-security prison in the Central American country.
Federal officials have said they’re criminals and members of Tren de Aragua, but advocates have challenged those claims and questioned authorities’ reliance on tattoos as signifiers of gang affiliation.
In the end, Finol Marquez was returned to Venezuela, which reached an agreement late last month to resume accepting repatriation flights from the U.S.
Arrested in driveway
Years before Finol Marquez’s detainment, he and Ariagnny met because they’re from the same neighborhood in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas. They’ve been together for almost a decade and wed about two years ago.
After making the four-month journey from their home country to the United States, they arrived in September 2023 and were part of the wave of Venezuelan migrants who traveled to Denver after crossing the border. They spent a year and a half starting new lives in Colorado before Finol Marquez was detained.
He said immigrants had successfully come to the U.S. for college and job opportunities, so he felt welcomed under then-President Joe Biden’s administration.
Back then, “the country was different,” he said.
Ariagnny applied for asylum and submitted her work permit paperwork. Finol Marquez applied for asylum, too, but a judge denied it.
On the morning of March 20, several unmarked vehicles pulled up outside the family’s home, according to videos shared with The Post. Both uniformed and plainclothes ICE agents apprehended Finol Marquez in his driveway.
He said they asked him questions in English, which he didn’t understand, and indicated for him to lift his hooded sweatshirt to examine his tattoos. Finol Marquez said he has a tattoo dedicated to his daughter.
Then, with his car keys and cell phone confiscated, he was put in handcuffs and loaded into a white Jeep, video footage shows. Ariagnny, who was pregnant at the time, looked on.
Finol Marquez confirmed that he had an active deportation order from last year and said it was the result of an unpaid traffic ticket. Without a work permit, he said he didn’t have the money to settle the fine.
Finol Marquez said after he was detained, he was taken to the ICE field office in Centennial where officials asked him to sign paperwork in English. Finol Marquez initially refused, but he said he felt pressured and ultimately signed it.
Later, he received a copy of the documents in Spanish, he said. They included a confession that stated he was a member of Tren de Aragua, he said, adding that other detained Venezuelans had also signed that paperwork.
“I’m a little worried,” he told The Post from the facility.
The Post has spoken with several immigration organizations about the alleged documents, but it was unable to obtain a copy and independently verify the claim. ABC News has also reported claims from detained Venezuelan men that they were compelled to sign confessions about being gang members.
When asked about the allegation, a local ICE spokesperson, who has declined to be quoted by name, did not directly respond. In a statement, the agency said it takes very seriously its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in its custody, and the allegation was not in keeping with ICE policies, practices and standards of care.
The agency previously shared the same statement for another Post story about detainees in Aurora.
At that detention facility, Finol Marquez said Mexicans, Guatemalans and other Venezuelans were among the people held there. He recalled one officer who spoke Spanish and helped him, but he also remembers arguing with another officer over whether he actually came to the U.S. to work.
“In reality, there was a lot of racist officials that treated us badly,” Finol Marquez said in a follow-up interview.
A statement sent by the GEO Group, a private contractor that runs the Aurora facility, said the company strongly rejected allegations of racism, pointing to its zero-tolerance policy with respect to staff misconduct or discrimination.
The statement said that, as a service provider to ICE, the GEO Group is required to follow performance-based national detention standards set by the Department of Homeland Security, including those governing the treatment of people in ICE custody.
The removal process
Finol Marquez’s removal left him and his loved ones with questions throughout the process.
Once he was moved from the Aurora facility, Ariagnny said she went days without hearing from him, and her biggest fear was “that he was taken to El Salvador.”
Finol Marquez said that possibility was also top of mind for him.
Before leaving Colorado, he said he asked an official where they were taking him, and that person responded that he’d find out in Texas.
Finol Marquez said he spent the entire day traveling on a plane — from Colorado to Washington state to Utah to Nevada to Arizona. There, he was given a cot, a pillow, a sandwich and water, he said.
The next morning, officers put Finol Marquez in metal handcuffs, leg irons and a belly chain, he said. Finol Marquez said another Venezuelan who spoke English asked an officer where they were going and was told to Florida, then Texas.
After another day of plane travel, Finol Marquez said he rode in a van for hours through Texas. At the final destination, other buses full of people arrived.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Finol Marquez remembered thinking. “Are they going to send us to El Salvador?”
He said he asked officers and didn’t receive responses. The detainees began boarding a plane: first women, then children, then men, Finol Marquez said. He estimates that more than 300 people were loaded onto the aircraft.
“It was scary because I didn’t know where they were going to take me,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment about Finol Marquez’s claims of government pressure to sign a Tren de Aragua confession and its lack of communication about what country he was being deported to during the removal process.
On the plane, Finol Marquez said he received a cookie, an apple and water, but his access to a restroom was limited.
After hours in flight, passengers recognized Venezuelan terrain below and started to cheer, Finol Marquez said. American officers removed his chains before landing, he said. He was then processed by Venezuelan officials.
Now that he’s returned to his motherland and been reunited with relatives, Finol Marquez said he’s feeling “good, thanks to God.”
He said his plan was to return to Venezuela eventually. But he didn’t want to do it so soon — or leave his family alone in the process.
“In reality, I didn’t think they would treat me like this,” he said, referring to the U.S. government representatives.
He said he wants his wife and children to come back to Venezuela. Ariagnny is also considering that option.
“To tell the truth, I have a lot of fear,” she said, “and I have thought about going back myself.”
