Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez, brothers deported from Long Island, hope to return to U.S. from El Salvador

Josue Trejo Lopez joined ROTC as a high school freshman and dreamed of one day serving as a U.S. Air Force pilot. A leader in his church youth group, he was supposed to graduate from high school last Wednesday.

Instead, earlier this month his wrists, legs and waist were shackled as he was deported to his native El Salvador, part of a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration under the Trump administration.

"I felt terrible. I was like, is this really happening? Am I really in shackles like a criminal, like a serious terrorist?" said Trejo Lopez, of Central Islip.

Josue, 19, and his brother Jose, 20, were brought to the United States as children by their mother after gangs threatened the family, they said. A decade later, the brothers say they feel more American than Salvadoran.

But they don’t know if they’ll ever be able to return to Georgia, where they grew up, or Long Island, where last year they moved in with their legal guardian. 

"It’s so strange because we don't know anybody, we have no family here," Jose said in a Zoom interview from San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

These days, the brothers mainly sit in the house of an old man they just met, a friend of their grandmother's. They are afraid to go out because the police or military might pick them up and put them in one of the country’s notorious jails.

Meanwhile, their mother waits in agony in Georgia to be reunited with her sons, who were father figures to and helped care for their nonverbal 8-year-old brother, Mateo. He has Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, and suffers seizures and other problems.

"I feel very sad, very bad," Alma Lopez said in Spanish in a Zoom interview from her home in Georgia. "They are over there" in El Salvador. "I brought them here so they would have a better future."

The brothers’ deportation apparently was part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to remove the 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. Trump has called it the biggest deportation effort in U.S. history.

The deportation campaign has become a hot-button issue, with supporters praising Trump for cracking down on a widespread, longtime problem and opponents asserting that many people like the two brothers are unjustly getting swept up in it.

Church backs return

The evangelical Christian church in Georgia where the boys were youth leaders has launched a campaign to bring them back to the United States. They are writing letters to immigration officials, raising funds to pay for legal expenses, and gathering signatures on a Change.org petition calling for the brothers to be brought home.

"These are just kids that didn’t have any say when they were brought over here, but they adopted America as their homeland. And right now, they’re in a country that’s completely strange to them," said Irving Membreno, the youth pastor at Monte Sinai church in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

"They're just young kids trying to achieve their goals, their dreams. And they should be where they have grown up," Membreno said.

Barrett Psareas, vice president of the Nassau County Civic Association, generally backs Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown. He said the brothers’ case was complicated in part because it wasn’t their decision to come here.

"Give them a shot" at staying here, Psareas said, assuming they are otherwise law-abiding, productive people.

Juan Carlos Mendoza, the brothers’ legal guardian and a childhood friend of their mother's, is praying they can come back to his home in Central Islip. The brothers moved in last year because they thought they would have better job opportunities in New York and did not want to be a burden on their mother, who makes $28,000 a year working in a plastics factory.

Jose spent the year in Central Islip studying on his own to become a day trader on Wall Street or a financial planner. He also helped Mendoza around the house.

Josue traveled back and forth as he finished his high school studies in Georgia. He was hoping to give his mother his graduation diploma as a belated birthday present.

Instead, he was deported on her birthday, May 7.

Life in San Salvador

The brothers spent their early years in the city of San Miguel, where Lopez could barely feed them. The boys’ father had abandoned them when they were toddlers. Lopez sold food on the streets to support her family.

By the time the boys were in grammar school, the area was infested with members of the notorious MS-13 gang, the family said. Members were extorting business owners for money and pressuring even young children to join.

"They were recruiting kids like from 9, 10, and up," Josue said. "There were MS-13s like everywhere. ... I didn't feel safe at all."

When gang members demanded that their mother pay them or they would kill her sons, she decided it was time to leave El Salvador. Jose was 11. Josue was 10. She was pregnant with Mateo.

They spent two weeks journeying to the U.S.-Mexico border and finally into Texas. At one point they got separated in the desert from the "coyote" leading a group of migrants entering the United States illegally and thought they might perish.

They ended up in Georgia, where Lopez had a sister. The boys knew no English, but within a year in school they could get by.

They later went to Loganville High School, located about 35 miles from Atlanta.

Jose was good at math, which he focused on. Teachers thought Josue had an aptitude for engineering and enrolled him in a special course. As a member of the school ROTC, he donned a blue uniform and marched in the local Thanksgiving Day parade and other events.

Outside of school, their focus was the church. Jose was a member of the media team, learning how to project the words of the daily Scripture reading on the wall during services, and posting content on the church’s Facebook page.

Josue became a Bible teacher for younger kids. Both brothers turned into mentors to younger church members, sharing the story of how they came to the United States with no English or friends but made a life for themselves, Membreno said

"They were very dedicated kids that were really active helping out with whatever they could," he said. "They were really family oriented and really focused on their faith."

Denied political asylum

Lurking in the background, though, was their legal status. Their mother applied for political asylum in 2016 after they crossed the border, asserting that she fled threats from MS-13. That application was denied and appeals were exhausted by 2020, said Ala Amoachi, an immigration attorney based in East Islip who is handling the family’s case. She contends if the case had been handled differently, it could have resulted in green cards for the brothers.

After the denial, the family checked in regularly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as required by law because they had a standing deportation order, Amoachi said. Nothing happened for years until March 14, when they appeared at ICE offices at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan for what they thought was another routine check-in.

Instead, agents detained the brothers. They let the mother go, apparently because she was with her disabled 8-year-old son, she said. The brothers have no criminal record, according to Amoachi. Law enforcement officials in New York and Georgia contacted by Newsday confirmed the brothers had no criminal record or they did not respond.

In a statement Friday, ICE said it followed U.S. laws when Border Patrol agents detained the brothers and their mother in 2016 in Texas, and that they were twice ordered deported by immigration judges. The brothers were ultimately arrested on March 14 and deported May 7 after all of their appeals had failed, ICE said.

Migrants being deported are "fully restrained using handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons ... to ensure the safety and well-being of both detainees and the officers/agents accompanying them," the agency said, noting that it is standard procedure.

Jose and Josue were shipped off to an ICE detention center in Buffalo, where they spent nearly two months. They were jailed even though they had a pending application for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status that Amoachi had filed on March 27. If approved, the special status is a pathway for some children under 21 years of age to gain legal residency in the United States because of neglect or abandonment by a parent, she said.

On May 2, the brothers were shackled and taken to an airplane that transported them to Texas and finally to another ICE detention facility in Louisiana. Five days later, on May 7, they were shackled again and loaded onto an airplane with about 85 migrants bound for El Salvador.

The brothers each had about $5 in their pockets, no passports and no contacts in El Salvador.

Back in a land they barely recognized, Jose said one low point came when they did a Zoom call with their mother and little brother Mateo, who did not recognize him because Jose’s hair had grown long.

After he got it cut, on the next call Mateo started screaming, laughing and then crying, Jose said.

"That's basically the part that really destroys me because I would like for him ... to understand what's going on right now, but it is difficult, because he's just basically like a little kid," Jose said. "He doesn't understand."

Jose and Josue now sit and hope for a miracle — to return to what they consider their home.

"I have a huge amount of faith that something is going to happen," Jose said, "and we are going to get a second opportunity to go back and demonstrate that we are good people for the country."