This Man Just Disappeared
Plus: China's baby bust, tough talk on the Ukraine war, and more...
The curious case of Ricardo Prada Vasquez: The Trump administration has lost a Venezuelan migrant they deported. His family cannot track him down, and the administration has not given any indication as to where he went. He's not on lists of people deported to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. He's not in the Immigration and Customs detainee database. ICE confirms he's been sent out of the country, but nobody can say where.
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Ricardo Prada Vasquez, a 32-year-old delivery guy working in Detroit, made a wrong turn onto the Ambassador Bridge, which connects the U.S. and Canada, while he was trying to deliver a McDonald's order in late January. When he tried to reenter the U.S., he was detained by American authorities, as he was only allowed one entry into the country: In November of last year, he had been admitted at a port of entry after waiting for a long time in Mexico to get an appointment through the CBP One app, now shuttered under President Donald Trump.
First, he was held at the Calhoun County Correctional Center in western Michigan. "An immigration judge granted a postponement on Feb. 3, after Mr. Prada had requested more time to find legal representation," reports The New York Times. "He failed to secure a lawyer…and was ordered deported on Feb. 27. He was transferred to an ICE facility in Ohio and then to the El Valle Detention Facility in South Texas." Then, he was deported out of the country, but nobody can say where he was sent.
"On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela. That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador" to the notorious CECOT prison (where Kilmar Abrego Garcia was previously being held*), claiming they were Tren de Aragua gang members. But Prada is not on the list of the more than 200 people deported to El Salvador that day. "We know nothing, nothing," says his brother. "He has simply disappeared," says his friend in Chicago, the last person he spoke to. His 4-year-old son and son's mother, living in Venezuela, haven't heard from him either. "He fell off the face of the earth," his son's mother tells the Times.
The Department of Homeland Security's X account says the Times' account is false, that Prada is a "confirmed member of Tren de Aragua" and a "designated a public safety threat," and that he has been deported to El Salvador. DHS does not say where in El Salvador, nor has it confirmed whether he is held in CECOT or explained why he doesn't appear on lists of individuals deported to El Salvador. There's not really any substantiation of the idea that he's a Tren de Aragua member, and his family members and friends interviewed by the Times contest that.
FALSE. Ricardo Jesus Prada Vasquez is a Venezuelan national and confirmed member of Tren de Aragua, entered the United States on Nov. 29, 2024 at the Brownsville, Texas Port of Entry via a CBP One app appointment. Prada was paroled into the US and served with a notice to appear… pic.twitter.com/u25CVodBDD
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 22, 2025
Note that family members did not get a response from DHS until The New York Times published an investigation into Prada's whereabouts:
It should HORRIFY you that it took a major news story for @DHSGov to say publicly that it imprisoned someone in El Salvador five weeks ago.
The man never once got a trial. No judge ever found him to be a public safety threat or a member of a gang. No due process. No nothing. https://t.co/US5Wc1LqA2
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) April 22, 2025
And they still haven't heard from their father, brother, son.
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QUICK HITS
- Worth your time if you're interested in China's baby bust, the possible invasion of Taiwan, the trade war, and more:
- Trump walked back his comments about firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
- Oddly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has canceled his trip to London, where he was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian, Russian, and various European officials to discuss an end to the war Russia started in Ukraine. "A source close to the discussions said the downgrading of the trip came after Ukraine drafted a paper for the Europeans on Tuesday, in which it said there would be no discussions on territorial issues until 'a full and unconditional ceasefire.'" reports Reuters. "The downgrading of the talks comes…just days after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that Washington could walk away if there was no progress on a deal soon. Trump raised the pressure on Sunday when he said he hoped Moscow and Kyiv would make a deal this week to end the three-year war." Vice President J.D. Vance reiterated many of these same points, emphasizing that territorial concessions are necessary.
- This article, which repeatedly frames issues within the Catholic Church as "liberal" vs. "conservative," contains a beautiful and, in my view, accurate quote from Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's foreign minister: "In many ways," Pope Francis was "an old-fashioned conservative Jesuit. At the same time, somebody who's very open to what certain other voices are saying in the church." Bringing those two things together, Gallagher said, was the story of Francis' pontificate.
- "With a high level of voluntary compliance, tax officials can check up on a higher share of shady-looking returns," writes Matt Yglesias at Slow Boring. "And the sense that a shady-looking return might be scrutinized motivates voluntary compliance. If enforcement capacity plummets, though, people will notice and voluntary compliance will fall, forcing us to rely more on hard enforcement, even as hard enforcement capacity has evaporated.…But the Republican Party has developed a perverse affection for rich tax cheats and as a result, Donald Trump is axing America's tax enforcement capacity and risking a collapse of voluntary compliance." Look, taxation is theft, but he's regrettably correct from a pragmatism standpoint: The Trump administration may run into revenue issues before too long, especially because "Trump has had multiple acting directors of the agency resign because they keep getting asked to turn tax data over to immigration authorities in a way that IRS leadership believes is illegal."
- Accurate:
He talks the way they talk in musicals right before they launch into a song https://t.co/DzhoQI7fuX
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) April 22, 2025
- A fun fact about Catholicism and food, two things I care deeply about: "The conclave that ended with the election of Pope Gregory X on Sept. 1, 1271, took two years, nine months and two days," per The New York Times. "Gregory subsequently wrote new rules to speed up the process. If a new pope was not elected within three days, he decreed, rations would be cut to one meal a day. After five more days, the cardinals would be restricted to bread and water." Incentives matter: "The next conclave lasted a day."
*CORRECTION: This article previously misstated where Kilmar Abrego Garcia is currently being held in El Salvador.
