The propaganda press tried to pluck at readers’ heartstrings in its storytelling of poor Merwil Alberto Gutierrez Flores, a 19-year-old Venezuelan man the Trump administration deported to Cecot Prison in El Salvador. Flores, an illegal alien from Venezuela, was sent to prison by airplane along with 237 other illegal immigrants after ICE “kidnapped,” the “teen” with “no criminal record,” as Charisma Madarang reported for Rolling Stone.
Technically, 19 is still a teenager, but a person is a legal adult at 18. The calculated choice of “teen” in the headline leads readers to assume Flores was a vulnerable child. He is not. He was arrested on weapons charges by New York Police before ICE picked him up.
Image CreditMerwil Alberto Gutierrez Flores/Courtesy of ICE
According to Madarang’s report, ICE arrested Flores on Feb. 24 while he was standing near his Bronx, New York, apartment building with two friends who were also arrested.
His family told Newsweek’s U.K.-based immigration reporter Billal Rahman, that Flores had no criminal record and ICE was not looking for him but decided to arrest him anyway.
A random arrest! Could you be next? Does that not strike fear in your heart, dear reader? That is the headspace propaganda press wants you in.
But honestly, does this story sound plausible? Is the Trump administration just rounding up people without cause now? Of course not.
The truth makes a lot more sense, and the truth had yet to come to light when these and other similar stories were written and repeated. ICE only recently released some of Flores’s records. But having only half the story didn’t stop the propaganda. The previous reports came from immigration reporters looking for a good story, as told by a distraught family member, with no documentation to back it up.
According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deportation records, Flores was accused of some troubling crimes the day FBI agents and New York City Police officers arrested him and later turned him over to ICE.
On Feb. 24, 2025, when the FBI and NYPD arrested Flores, authorities charged him with criminal possession of a loaded firearm; possession of a loaded firearm on school grounds; criminal possession of stolen property relating to firearms; and possession of “certain ammunition feeding devices.”
The DHS records say Flores had $2 on him when arrested and he had no tattoos. He reportedly indicated he had no family and said he was not affiliated with a gang; but the records say the latter claim is not true.
“Subject has been identified as a[n] Associate/Active of Tren de Aragua,” the papers say, with a redacted list of records checked.
Flores entered the U.S. illegally near Paso Del Norte, Texas, on June 21, 2023, and Border Patrol arrested him. That was his first crime, although the propaganda press tends to overlook that one. He entered when he was 18, and Border Patrol put him in “240 proceedings,” meaning a judge would decide if he could stay in the United States.
Under former President Joe Biden mass immigration policies, Flores could have stayed in the U.S. until his scheduled hearing with an immigration judge on Feb. 1, 2027, DHS records show.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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