Ricardo Prada Vsquez, a Venezuelan man whose family says he was disappeared and who wasnt included on a previously leaked government list of people sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, was included on a private airlines flight manifest to the country, according to hacked airline data obtained and analyzed by 404 Media.That means a private charter flight company might have more accurate information on where people are being deported than the government, experts say, and raises questions about the process being used to deport people.While the government initially declined to say where Prada had been sent before eventually admitting he was sent to El Salvador, the man was on a manifest for a March 15 flight held by GlobalX, one of ICEs primary charter companies. The news also raises questions about whether other people whose families are unaware of their whereabouts may be in El Salvador too.Do you know the name of anyone else who has been deported but their whereabouts are unknown? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.There are so many levels at which this concerns me. One is they clearly did not take enough care in this to even make sure they had the right lists of who they were removing, and who they were not sending to a prison that is a black hole in El Salvador, Michelle Bran, executive director of Together and Free, a group that has been working with families of deported people, including Pradas, told 404 Media. They weren't even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there. What that says about how much due process or how much accuracy there is in the rest of the assessments of whether these people should be on those planes at all follows very closely behind that.The hacked flight data provides new insight into where exactly the U.S. government and one of its airline contractors transported Prada after his arrest in January. According to the data obtained by 404 Media, Prada was listed on a flight from Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, to Comayagua International Airport, also known as Palmerola International Airport, in Honduras. The flight had 163 booked passengers, according to the data. Harlingen is along the U.S.-Mexico border and has an immigration court.Then, he was listed on a second flight from Comayagua International Airport to El Salvador International, according to the data. 0:00 /0:04 1 Visualization of the flight data. Made by 404 Media in FlightMapper. We are in touch with Ricardo's family and are exploring litigation to secure his release from CECOT. We are working to offer representation but are facing serious barriers to ensure Ricardo has access to justice, as he is being held incommunicado in horrific conditions, Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Centers Asylum Project, told 404 Media.GlobalX is a charter company that handles many of ICEs deportation flights. In 2024, 74 percent of ICEs more than 1,500 removal flights were on GlobalX plans, according to a data set from Tom Cartwright who tracks ICE Air flights which the Project on Government Oversight reported on in March.Earlier this week 404 Media reported a hacker targeted GlobalX and stole passenger and flight information from the company. This is the data that includes details on Pradas deportation.Prada was detained when he was working a food delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonalds, then took a wrong turn onto the Ambassador Bridge which leads to Canada, The New York Times previously reported. Prada was taken into custody when he tried to re-enter the U.S., and was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15 he told a friend in Chicago he was one of a number of detainees in Texas who expected to be sent to Venezuela, the report added.Around this time the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelans to El Salvador. But as the Times and other outlets reported, Prada was not on a list of 238 people deported to El Salvador. CBS published that list on March 20, and later reported that it could not find criminal records for 75 percent of the Venezuelans. Friends and family of Prada told the Times that he had simply disappeared and we know nothing, nothing.It was only after coverage saying Prada had disappeared that the Department of Homeland Securitys X account said On March 15, Prada was removed to El Salvador. In that X post, DHS repeated the claim that Prada is confirmed member of Tren de Aragua [TdA], a Venezuelan gang that the government has said is controlled by Venezuelas president. When contacted for comment for this story, DHS replied with the same statement posted to its X account, which said that after Prada being referred to secondary inspection Further investigation resulted in Prada being designated a public safety threat as a confirmed member of TdA and in violation of his conditions of admission. Prada was apprehended and transferred to ICE Michigan for detention. On Feb. 27, an immigration judge ordered Prada removed from the U.S.Immigration and legal experts 404 Media spoke to said the fact that in some cases GlobalX had a more accurate list of people who were sent to El Salvador than the federal government seems to have had is highly concerning.These manifests suggest that the government has access to information that it apparently did not initially disclose to a court about the fate of deported Venezuelan men who have been ordered back to this country, Laura Rivera, an attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media.There have been longstanding issues with locating people held in Department of Homeland Security custody due to transfers between different facilities, as well as a lack of access to legal counsel and interpretation, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institutes U.S. Immigration Policy Program, told 404 Media in an email. But especially in recent years, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, really fast deportations have made it even more difficult to verify where people are, with families sometimes not learning that their relatives have been deported until after they are already back in their home country, or in the case of Alien Enemies Act deportations, a third country.She added that with fast deportations, even different officials have seemed unaware of noncitizens' locations because of the speed at which they were removed.GlobalX, Airline for Trumps Deportations, HackedHackers say they have obtained what they say are passenger lists for GlobalX flights from January to this month. The data appears to include people who have been deported.404 MediaJoseph CoxBran from Together and Free was also the immigration detention ombudsman and head of the family reunification task force at the Department of Homeland Security in the Biden administration, where her job was to specifically review situations like this and to make sure they did not happen.If they didn't even set up a system in which to accurately track who they were removing, who, according to them, are terrorists and serious gang members, people that were being accused of that, to me that means they have zero respect for the value of those lives and for the due process involved in carrying out an operation like this, Bran said.If you don't know who you're sending, how do we know that you even took the proper steps and care in identifying the right people to get on those planes?, Bran added. It seems pretty clear that they didn't [take the proper care], if they don't even know who was on the plane. It's pretty shocking.The Venezuelan nationals deported to El Salvador were done so under Trumps invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The government believes this allows it to deport people without an immigration hearing if they are identified as a member of Tren de Aragua. However, a declassified memo reported on by the Times says U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe the gang is controlled by Venezuela's president, undercutting the provided justification for using that law.They weren't even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there.This week multiple judges blocked the Trump administration from deporting people under the AEA, various media outlets reported. In one of those, the judge said that none of the requirements for the invocation of the AEA had been metbecause Tren de Aragua is not a nation or government. This followed an earlier similar ruling on May 1.Rivera said reporting around this undermines Trumps spurious claims that these men are all gang members and that Venezuelas Maduro regime is directing this gang. With those justifications stripped away, what remains is the lawless expulsion of scores of people apparently based on their nationality, something that should move all people of conscience to demand their return.The hacker also defaced GlobalXs website with a message that pointed to the May 1 ruling from U.S. District judge Fernando Rodriguez which said the president unlawfully invoked the AEA as part of those deportations.Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans, the message said, referring to the Anonymous umbrella that some hackers claim their hacks under.404 Media verified the data at the time by cross-referencing the flight and passenger data with well-known and less-known flights and deportees. On May 5, Politico revealed the identity of a second man deported to El Salvador by mistake, the first being Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia. That second man was Daniel Lozano-Camargo, and 404 Media also found his name in the hacked GlobalX data. Crucially, his identity was only revealed publicly after the hack happened, meaning the hacker could not have fabricated his inclusion.There's mistakes in the best of times, right? And the fact that this was done the way it was done, you're gonna have even more mistakes, Bran said. It's catastrophic. We're talking about disappearing people and sending them into a black hole, accusing them of very serious things, and not documenting how you came to that conclusion or who you did it with.