Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was ready to send at least 28 migrants to El Salvador's mega-prison before the order was abruptly halted by federal courts Friday. Now, one of the detainees who was in those buses is recounting the experience that led him to believe he would lose contact with his family forever.
Eduardo Daboin Rall was in one of the buses at ICE's Bluebonnet detention facility in Texas when it departed for a would-be deportation flight from Abilene, Texas. That was until the Department of Homeland Security got a call to "cancel" the trip, ordering the but to turn around and send the migrants back to the facility.
"I felt really nervous. It made me cry," Daboin Rall told NBC News in Spanish in a call from the Bluebonnet facility. "It made me and the others pray and ask God. I was so nervous because I wasn't going to have any more communication with my family, and I knew they wouldn't be able to communicate with me."
The migrant told NBC News that ICE notified him and other detainees they would be sent to El Salvador.
"My fellow [detainees] are really afraid that we'll be deported to El Salvador," Daboin Rall said. "There's no reason for why they're doing it, and there's even less reason because I haven't had any sort of criminal record in my country nor in this country."
The news outlet was not able to find any criminal records or arrests for Daboin Rall in an extensive database search, and he denies any gang affiliation. DHS and ICE have provided no explanation in response to questions about the reason for his detainment and potentially imminent removal from the country under the Alien Enemies Act.
Daboin Rall entered the country in 2023 through the CBP One parole program. Records provided to NBC News show that he met monthly with an ICE officer at the El Paso, Texas, field office.
"I've never missed a court appearance. I've never missed an appointment with immigration or ICE," he said. "The truth is: I don't have any criminal record. I've done everything correctly according to the rules of this country."
The cancelled rounds of deportation flights came in the middle of a federal court hearing over the government's ability to remove the detainees under the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled early Saturday that the administration must halt the deportation of migrants under the act for now.
The court's order did not explain their reasoning behind their decision. Yet it drew scathing dissents from conservatives Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito criticized the Court, saying his colleagues acted "hastily and prematurely" to grant "unprecedented" emergency relief to a putative class of Venezuelans.
"Literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order," Alito wrote in his dissent.
The administration is expected to return to the Supreme Court quickly in an effort to persuade the justices to lift their temporary order.
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