ICE Disappearances: Frengel Reyes Mota is at CECOT
Frengel Reyes Mota is not a criminal.
The Disappearance of Frengel Reyes Mota: When Administrative Error Becomes a Life Sentence
Published: February 1, 2026
Classification: Active Investigation / Immigration Enforcement Disappearance
Location: Virginia → El Salvador
Victim: Frengel Reyes Mota, 24
Status: Wrongfully Deported, Incommunicado
In the quiet hum of bureaucratic indifference, lives can vanish not with malice, but with the casual stroke of a keyboard. The case of Frengel Reyes Mota stands as a chilling testament to how administrative incompetence—when wielded by state power—can effectively disappear a man from the face of the earth, leaving behind only a family and a dog who still wait for his return.
The Man Who Followed the Rules
Frengel Reyes Mota was not hiding. The 24-year-old Venezuelan immigrant had fled the political and economic chaos of his homeland to seek legal asylum in the United States. He entered the country through proper channels, had no criminal record in either Venezuela or the United States, and maintained steady employment as a house painter. He was, by all accounts, the model of the American immigration narrative: hardworking, law-abiding, and building a life for his family.
Reyes Mota had married a woman with a young son, becoming a stepfather to a nine-year-old boy. The family lived modestly in Virginia, where Reyes Mota carefully budgeted household expenses to ensure their dog, Sasha, could enjoy occasional treats. Colleagues described him as reliable; neighbors knew him as quiet and kind. He had no gang tattoos—no tattoos at all. No gang affiliations. No history of violence. No criminal connections.
He was, in every measurable sense, invisible to law enforcement—until he wasn’t.
The Check-In That Never Ended
On what should have been a routine day, Reyes Mota appeared for his regular Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-in. These appointments are standard procedure for asylum seekers awaiting court dates: a brief verification that the individual remains at their listed address, follows the terms of their release, and maintains contact with the immigration system. Compliance is not only expected but legally required.
Reyes Mota arrived expecting to verify his information and return home for dinner with his family. Instead, agents took him into custody.
The charge, according to ICE paperwork: association with Carlos Ortiz-Morales.
There was just one problem—several, actually. The arrest documentation, reviewed later in immigration court, contained Frengel Reyes Mota’s name nowhere in its primary identification sections. Instead, it listed “Carlos Ortiz-Morales” six separate times. The paperwork alternated between referring to the subject as male and female, using “she” and “her” pronouns for the 24-year-old man standing in custody. At one point, the document cited an entirely different person’s immigration identification number.
The errors were not subtle. They were not typographical. They suggested a document constructed from templates and databases, cross-referenced incorrectly, and applied to a living human being with devastating finality.
The Illegal Removal
Within days, Reyes Mota was transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT) in El Salvador—a facility that represents the cutting edge of careeral nightmare architecture.
Located on 57 acres of former military land, CECOT is the largest prison in Latin America, designed explicitly to house suspected gang members and terrorists under conditions that have drawn international condemnation from human rights organizations. Prisoners are confined to cells housing approximately 150 men each, with bunk beds stacked four-high in warehouse-style dormitories. Each cell contains two toilets and two Bibles. The lights remain on 24 hours a day. Recreation is limited to 30 minutes daily, restricted to exercise or Bible study. No visitations are permitted. No phone calls. No contact with the outside world.
Reyes Mota, who had never been accused of terrorism, never been linked to gang activity, and whose arrest paperwork couldn’t even correctly identify his name, was flown to this facility and deposited into its mechanical maw.
Under federal immigration law, removing an asylum applicant from the United States without a court order is illegal. Reyes Mota had an active asylum case with a scheduled hearing. By deporting him before that hearing could occur, ICE did not merely make a procedural error—they violated federal statute.
The Hearing That Never Happened
Days after Reyes Mota’s disappearance, his attorney appeared in immigration court for the asylum hearing Reyes Mota never attended—because he was already imprisoned in El Salvador. When the ICE representatives presented their documentation to the judge, the litany of errors became apparent: wrong name, wrong gender, wrong identification number.
When the judge asked ICE counsel if they had made a mistake, the government attorneys responded that they would “look into it.”
The immigration judge, recognizing the Kafkaesque nature of the proceedings, froze Reyes Mota’s asylum case rather than dismissing it. The decision preserves the possibility that, should Reyes Mota somehow return to the United States, he may resume his legal claim where it left off. It is a judicial Hail Mary, a placeholder for justice deferred.
The Silence
Before his transfer to CECOT, while still in domestic ICE detention, Reyes Mota managed one phone call to his family. He did not ask about legal strategies or court dates. He asked about Sasha, the family dog—was she eating properly? He asked about his stepson, how the boy was performing in school. Then the line went dead, and the silence has persisted since.
His wife and stepson now occupy a liminal space familiar to families of the disappeared: the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing if he is alive, if he is injured, if he will ever walk through their door again. They cannot contact him. They cannot send letters. They cannot hire an El Salvadoran attorney to check on his welfare because CECOT does not recognize due process in the conventional sense.
The family has been disappeared from his life as thoroughly as he has been disappeared from theirs.
The “More to the Story” Defense
In cases of extraordinary state failure, the public often retreats to a comforting assumption: there must be more to the story. The logic follows that no bureaucracy, however flawed, would deport an innocent man to a supermax prison based on paperwork that doesn’t even bear his name. There must be hidden gang affiliations. There must be sealed indictments. There must be secret evidence that justifies the inexplicable.
But the evidence that has emerged suggests the opposite: a system operating on autopilot, where databases generate documents, documents generate custody, and custody generates revenue for private detention or diplomatic leverage with foreign prison systems. If there were “more to the story,” ICE had every opportunity to present it in court. Instead, they offered paperwork with the wrong name and a promise to investigate their own error.
The Investigation
The case of Frengel Reyes Mota raises questions that extend beyond one man’s fate. It illuminates the opacity of immigration enforcement databases, the lack of accountability for erroneous arrests, and the legal vacuum created when deportation precedes due process.
Critical questions remain unanswered:
How did Carlos Ortiz-Morales’s name replace Frengel Reyes Mota’s in the arrest documentation?
Who authorized the deportation of an asylum applicant with an active court date?
What protocols exist to verify identity before transfer to foreign custody?
Has the U.S. government requested Reyes Mota’s return from El Salvador?
What is his current medical and psychological condition in CECOT?
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has documented Reyes Mota’s case as part of their “The Disappeared” initiative, tracking immigrants who have vanished into enforcement systems without trace. Advocacy groups continue to pressure ICE for answers, though the agency maintains only that they are “looking into” the documentation errors.
Conclusion
Frengel Reyes Mota did not vanish into the night. He vanished into daylight, into a government office, into a system so indifferent to individual identity that it could not be bothered to spell his name correctly on the paperwork that stole his life. He is not a fugitive. He is not a criminal. He is a house painter who loved his dog, worried about his stepson’s grades, and trusted that keeping his appointments with immigration authorities would keep him safe.
He was wrong.
Until Reyes Mota is returned to U.S. soil, until his case can be heard by a court that recognizes his name, until his family receives a phone call that he is alive, his disappearance remains an open wound in the narrative of American justice—a cold case of administrative violence that demands resolution.
If you have information about Frengel Reyes Mota’s current status or the circumstances of his arrest, contact TheColdCases.com or LULAC’s “The Disappeared” initiative.