At least one detainee from the immigration detention facility in Aurora has been sent to an El Salvadoran prison, immigrant assistance groups confirmed this week.
Nixon Azuaje-Perez, 19, is a Venezuelan migrant who was held at the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center before being transported to Texas, then sent on a plane to El Salvador, said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa De Paz, on Thursday. Her Aurora-based organization visits immigrants at the detention facility and provides assistance upon their release.
The Trump administration has sent four planes carrying a total of more than 250 detainees — many of them Venezuelan migrants — to El Salvador to be housed in a prison, with the most recent one flying Sunday. Officials have said they are gang members, but advocates dispute the gang ties of Azuaje-Perez and some of the other detained men.
Loya said Azuaje-Perez was moved out of Colorado before a March 11 court date, and March 14 was the last that anyone had heard from him.
His name appears on an “internal government list” — reported by CBS News on March 20 — of Venezuelan men moved out of the U.S. to El Salvador’s maximum-security prison.
According to a Friday statement by three advocacy groups, Azuaje-Perez left his home country at the age of 13 — first heading southwest to Peru, then north to the U.S. Advocates say he and his family sought asylum at the southern border in August 2023, and they resided in shelters in New York City.
The organizations report that the family received work permits, and Azuaje-Perez moved to Aurora to find job opportunities, landing regular work with an employer.
Starting in December 2023, he lived at Aspen Grove Apartments — owned by problematic landlords CBZ Management — on Nome Street in Aurora, advocates say.
The Aurora Police Department announced last year that it had arrested Azuaje-Perez on July 29 on an allegation of “tampering with evidence” tied to a July 28 shooting that took place on Nome Street. 9News cited court documents saying he told police that he didn’t want law enforcement to believe he was involved in the crime; he said he picked up shell casings and threw them into an area with rocks.
The names of three other men who were also arrested by police at that time weren’t included on the list reported by CBS.
The advocacy groups say Azuaje-Perez was released from jail on Aug. 2 and attended a pretrial hearing on Sept. 13 after which ICE agents arrested him. Police said in a September statement that they suspected Azuaje-Perez was a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Advocacy groups believe he was flown out of the country on March 15.
ICE directed questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS didn’t respond to a request to confirm Azuaje-Perez’s circumstances and provide further details about why he was detained and deported to El Salvador.
