Miguel Barrios Disappeared And May Be At CECOT
Immigration Isn’t Telling
The Disappearance of Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios: A Husband Vanishes into America’s Shadow Prison System
Case Status: Active — Forced Disappearance Alleged
Last Seen: March 15, 2025
Location: Deported to El Salvador, detained at CECOT prison
Victim: Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios, 33
Key Figures: Glory Browning (wife), UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances
The American Dream Interrupted
Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios arrived in the United States in 2021, fleeing the turmoil of Venezuela with nothing but hope and determination. Like countless immigrants before him, he came seeking safety and opportunity — the promise that has drawn people to American shores for generations.
He found work in New York City as an Uber driver, delivered food for DoorDash, and took construction jobs when available. He was, by all accounts, a man willing to do whatever it took to build a life. But it wasn’t just work Miguel found in America. He found love.
Their meeting was quintessentially modern — a chance encounter at an Apple store where Glory Browning helped Miguel secure a Genius Bar appointment. What began as a simple act of customer service bloomed into romance. Glory, a U.S. citizen with two young daughters, found in Miguel a partner who embraced not just her, but her entire family.
“He’s charismatic, a people person, while I’m more reserved,” Glory recalled. “He loves to dance and talk to people. He loves to cook; his dream is to open a restaurant.”
Miguel didn’t hesitate at the prospect of instant fatherhood. Glory’s two young daughters — both under four — needed a male role model, and Miguel stepped into that void with an “innate fatherly spirit.” By 2024, the couple had married and combined their households. They pooled their limited resources to hire an immigration attorney. Miguel held Temporary Protected Status (TPS), had an ongoing asylum case, and Glory had filed an I-130 petition for alien relative status — the standard pathway for a U.S. citizen to obtain legal residency for a foreign spouse.
They were following the rules. Doing everything right. Building their American dream one careful step at a time.
Then the nightmare began.
A Wrong Place, Wrong Time Arrest
On March 27, 2024, Miguel was helping a friend move in the Bronx. It was the kind of favor friends do for each other — carrying boxes, offering an extra pair of hands. But someone in the building called police with a noise complaint. When officers arrived at the crowded apartment, they discovered illegal items belonging to the residents.
Miguel didn’t live there. The contraband wasn’t his. But he was swept up in the arrest along with the actual occupants.
The tabloids pounced. Stories appeared labeling Miguel a “gangbanger,” a characterization that would prove baseless — the charges filed against him were ultimately dismissed by a judge. But the damage was done. His name was smeared. His character assassinated in the court of public opinion.
Glory was pregnant with their first child together when police took Miguel to Rikers Island Jail.
Some of the other men arrested that day made a fateful choice: they signed deportation orders and secured their release. But Miguel and Glory decided to fight. They had invested thousands in legal fees. They were married. They were pursuing the proper immigration channels. Surely, they reasoned, the system would recognize that Miguel belonged here with his family.
They chose to keep him in detention rather than accept voluntary departure. It was a decision that would haunt them.
“I regret that now,” Glory said, her voice heavy with the burden of hindsight. “But I never thought in a million years that he would be sent to an El Salvadorian prison.”
Birth in Captivity
While Miguel remained incarcerated at Rikers, life marched on without him. Glory gave birth to their daughter — Miguel’s first biological child — in the summer of 2024. He wasn’t there for the delivery. He didn’t hold his newborn daughter. He didn’t witness her first breath, her first cry, her first moments of life.
Their baby is now a year old. Miguel has never held her.
The financial strain of single parenthood forced Glory to abandon her dental hygiene studies. She and her three daughters — all under four years old — moved into her mother’s home, their dreams of independence deferred indefinitely.
Miguel was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on May 20, 2024. Despite the dismissal of his criminal charges, he remained detained. He called Glory nearly every day, their conversations brief lifelines across the bureaucratic chasm separating them.
Nine months into his detention, Miguel made a desperate choice. In December 2024, he signed the deportation order. He and Glory just wanted their family back. They would deal with immigration status later; first, they needed him free.
They didn’t understand that some doors, once opened, cannot be closed.
The Vanishing
On Friday, March 14, 2025, Miguel called Glory from a detention center in Texas. It would be their final conversation.
He told her he believed he would be deported to Venezuela or Mexico — countries where he had connections, where he might survive, where he might eventually find his way back to her. He sounded uncertain but hopeful.
Then his alien number disappeared from the online tracking system. And Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios disappeared from his family’s life.
On March 15, 2025, Miguel was reportedly among 238 men deported to El Salvador and transported directly to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) — a massive maximum-security prison constructed in 2023 under President Nayib Bukele’s state of emergency. The facility, designed to house suspected gang members, has become a symbol of El Salvador’s controversial anti-gang crackdown and, increasingly, a destination for migrants deported from the United States.
Glory studied every photograph and video footage of the arriving prisoners, searching desperately for Miguel’s face among the shaved heads and orange jumpsuits. She never found him. His name appeared on published lists of the 238 men sent to CECOT, but when Rep. Matt Gaetz released videos of the prisoners in May 2025, Miguel was nowhere to be seen.
The absence haunts her. Where is he? Is he alive? Is he receiving food? Is he being harmed?
“People say online that some of them might be dead, and I pray that he’s not, but I don’t know,” Glory admitted. “After he disappeared, I couldn’t eat for a month, and I would throw up in the night. I couldn’t work and I could barely get through the day and take care of my children.”
The psychological toll has fundamentally altered her worldview. “I don’t see things the same way anymore. I can’t trust people the same way. I still love my country, but it has betrayed me.”
A Constitutional Crisis in One Family
Glory Browning is not just a grieving wife. She is a U.S. citizen whose constitutional rights, she argues, have been trampled alongside her husband’s.
“My husband’s rights have been violated: his due process rights, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment,” she stated emphatically. “He should have been protected, no matter what immigration status, color, nationality, creed, or religion. We all learned in school that the Constitution is the basis of this country. If the government is violating Constitutional rights, is this still a Constitutional country?”
Her question cuts to the heart of a legal and moral crisis. The U.S. government deported a man lawfully married to an American citizen — a man with pending immigration paperwork, dismissed criminal charges, and no demonstrated gang affiliation — to a foreign prison where he remains incommunicado, his whereabouts and condition unknown.
In April 2025, Glory submitted Miguel’s case to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances. In a chilling response, the El Salvadoran government informed the UN that Miguel and the other men sent by the U.S. to CECOT “are under the jurisdiction and control of the United States.”
The implication is staggering: the U.S. has outsourced incarceration to a foreign power while maintaining legal control over the prisoners. Yet no U.S. officials have visited CECOT. No congressional oversight has been conducted. No family members have been granted contact with their disappeared loved ones.
The Search Continues
Every day brings fresh agony for Glory and her daughters. The questions multiply without answers. The uncertainty festers into trauma that will likely span generations.
Yet she persists.
“What really keeps me going is God; I pray and read the Bible every night. I have three daughters. I can’t give up, they need me. I have to keep pressing forward and fighting for him, for our family.”
Her fight has taken on political dimensions. Glory urges American citizens to contact their representatives and senators, demanding they visit CECOT prison to oversee conditions for prisoners under U.S. jurisdiction. She wants assurance that the men are alive, unharmed, and not being subjected to torture or illegal treatment.
Her message is simple: This is not about immigration policy. This is about basic human rights, due process, and governmental accountability. If the Constitution means anything, it must protect the most vulnerable — including the foreign-born spouses of American citizens.
Questions Without Answers
The case of Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios raises troubling questions that extend far beyond one family’s tragedy:
How many other individuals with dismissed charges and pending legal status were deported to CECOT?
What legal authority allows the U.S. to maintain “jurisdiction and control” over prisoners in a foreign facility while denying them due process and family contact?
Why has Congress failed to exercise oversight over this unprecedented arrangement with El Salvador?
What is the actual fate of the men whose names appear on deportation lists but who remain unseen in any visual documentation?
For Glory Browning, these questions are academic abstractions compared to the raw reality of her husband’s absence. She doesn’t need policy papers or legal briefs. She needs Miguel home, holding their daughter, cooking in their kitchen, dancing in their living room.
She needs him to stop being one of The Disappeared.
If you have any information about Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios or other individuals deported to CECOT prison, please contact TheColdCases.com. Glory Browning encourages all readers to contact their elected representatives demanding oversight and humanitarian access to CECOT prisoners.