Families of Venezuelan deportees held in El Salvador’s infamous Cecot prison can petition the Salvadoran government for their release – but the fruitfulness of that process is an open question in a country accused of arbitrary detention by rights groups and even the US State Department.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump used the Alien Enemies Act to deport 238 Venezuelans from the United States—sending them not to their home country, but to a prison in El Salvador notorious for its harsh conditions.

El Salvador's CECOT prison, where over 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S. are being held, has been criticized for alleged human rights violations.

The 31-year-old is among multiple migrants whose family members or lawyers have said were wrongly accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation and deported to a notoriously strict El Salvador earlier this month.

A law firm hired by Caracas filed a petition in El Salvador's Supreme Court Monday for the liberation of dozens of the 238 Venezuelans deported from the United States to a notoriously harsh prison in the Central American country.

President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court for permission to resume his administration's deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law.