The Seattle-area family of a Venezuelan migrant who was reportedly sent to a military facility in Guantánamo Bay said Sunday he had been falsely labeled as a violent gang member by the Trump administration.
José Medina Andrade, 29, had been arrested Nov. 14 in Renton on an immigration-related charge, held at a federal detention center in El Paso, Texas, then moved to the U.S. military's detention camp on the coast of Cuba around Feb. 7, family members and activists said at a news conference in downtown Seattle.
According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, a detainee named José Gregorio Medina Andrade is currently at a detention facility in Florida. But a story Wednesday in The New York Times listed Medina Andrade among 53 Venezuelan citizens who were recently flown to Guantánamo Bay.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the men were detained because they illegally entered the United States, according to The New York Times. The agency characterized the men as "high-threat illegal aliens" and said some were violent gang members — though the newspaper noted it had not independently assessed those claims.
Medina Andrade's family and friends rejected the Trump administration's labels. They said Medina Andrade, a 29-year-old father of two, was fleeing gang violence when he entered the United States in 2023 and again in 2024.
"What they are saying is lies," Medina Andrade's sister told a small crowd of supporters and reporters at Sunday's news conference on the steps of the federal courthouse in Seattle. "He was running from the very gang they are accusing him of being in."
Medina Andrade's sister spoke via an interpreter, as did his wife. Organizers of Sunday's event said both women wanted to remain anonymous to protect themselves and their families.
Questions about the case that were emailed to Homeland Security and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement received only automated responses Sunday.
Guantánamo Bay, the Pentagon's notorious facility at a U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba, was initially established under President George W. Bush as an open-air prison camp that held suspected international terrorists indefinitely in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
In late January, Trump directed the prison be expanded to "full capacity" to house migrants who were illegally in the United States, "to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty."
The Seattle Times was unable to independently verify all the claims made at the news conference about Medina Andrade's case or his family's story, although some details are corroborated in court filings.
Medina Andrade, his wife and two young children entered the United States in February 2023 and requested asylum to escape threats of violence in Venezuela, according to local immigrant rights advocates.
During interviews with immigration officials, Medina Andrade, who doesn't speak English and is illiterate, was separated from his family. He was found to be ineligible for asylum and eventually sent back to Venezuela, said Jessica Rojas, a Seattle-area migrant rights activist with International Migrants Alliance, who also spoke at Sunday's event.
When Medina Andrade entered the United States again in late 2023, he was detained and later released on probation in 2024, according to organizers, as well as court filings.
He later traveled to Chicago, apparently with court approval, to be with his sister's family, according to organizers and court filings.
In September, Medina Andrade and his family followed Medina Andrade's sister to the Seattle area, where his sister hoped to get medical treatment for her son. Rojas and other organizers said Medina Andrade missed an immigration-related court hearing because he wasn't notified and had not received a response to queries sent to immigration officials.
Medina Andrade also failed to report to his probation officer and violated an order by an immigration judge not to leave Chicago, according to federal court filings.
A federal court in Texas issued a warrant for Medina Andrade, according to court filings.
Medina Andrade was arrested in November at a Walmart in Renton and eventually sent back to Texas after a federal magistrate judge in Seattle determined he "is a flight risk and should be detained."
Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokesperson, told The New York Times the agency had sent nearly 100 people to Guantánamo Bay as of last week, and that each had final deportation orders. McLaughlin said all were considered to have "committed a crime by entering the United States illegally."
On Feb. 7, Medina Andrade's family received a call from another detainee at the Texas detention center who reported Medina Andrade had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay, organizers said.
Initially, "the family had no idea what that was," said another organizer, Kasandra Seda, with Capybara Colectiva, a Seattle-area migrants' rights organization. But after advocates described "what Guantánamo Bay was, and where it was, they were heartbroken and devastated."
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