‘Bogus’ Interpol red notice kept mum from El Salvador in US immigration detention for six years
A woman spent six years languishing in US immigration detention due to a “bogus” Interpol red notice stemming from a harassment campaign by a police officer in El Salvador.
Jessica Barahona Martinez, who is originally from the Central American country, told Sky News and its US partner NBC News about her ordeal in her first sit-down interview since her release.
During her time in detention, her sister died of cancer and she rarely saw her children after being moved to a facility more than 1,000 miles away from her family.
Ms Barahona Martinez’s lawyer Sandra Grossman describes it as one of the worst cases she had come across.
“We have been fighting bogus red notices for over 15 years,” she said.
“And I can tell you that this is one of the most egregious examples of Interpol abuse that we’ve ever seen.”
The US is considered a leader in tackling Interpol abuse – in which authoritarian states use the notice system to target dissidents abroad, or when individuals use it in the service of private disputes.
While the US has specific legislation to prevent Interpol from being used for transnational repression, immigration authorities are ignoring guidance not to arrest people solely based on a red notice.
Since her release, Ms Barahona Martinez has been trying to repair her mental health
Ms Barahona Martinez said her ordeal began when a local police officer in her hometown in El Salvador began a campaign of harassment, targeting her due to her sexuality.
She said he initially accused her of being interested in his girlfriend, and went on to sexually harass and assault her in the town’s market.
“He talked to me like I was nothing, like I was trash,” she said. “He called me a waste of a woman.”
Dangerous allegation
Eventually, the police officer accused Ms Barahona Martinez of extortion, for the amount of roughly $30, and said she was part of a gang – which is considered an extremely serious allegation in El Salvador.
The country has a long history of gang violence, and at one point had the highest murder rate in the world.
The subsequent crackdown has been effective but brutal; human rights groups say it has included torture and arbitrary detention, while police have bragged about being able to “arrest anyone we want”.
Jessica Barahona Martinez reunited with her family. Pic: ACLU
Ms Barahona Martinez spent nine months detained in El Salvador waiting for a court date, until her case was dismissed for lack of evidence in March 2015.
Upon her release, the harassment resumed. She said the same car would drive by her house each night.
Ms Barahona Martinez has three children from a previous relationship, and says she started receiving threatening phone calls from a person who listed her children’s names and where they went to school.
In May 2016, a year after her case was dismissed in El Salvador, Ms Barahona Martinez fled to the US. She submitted an official asylum application in April 2017.
However, she was unaware that police in El Salvador had attempted to re-open her case in the meantime.
She did not show up for a subsequent court appearance, and so local police circulated a red notice via Interpol.
Immigration officers in the US are not supposed to detain somebody purely on the basis of a red notice.
But when Ms Barahona Martinez attended her monthly check-in with immigration authorities on a Friday in June, she was told to head home and pack her bags, say goodbye to her children and report to a detention centre the following Monday morning.
Two asylum bids
Ms Barahona Martinez first learned she had been detained due to a red notice when she was denied bail a month later.
She would spend six years in detention.
Twice she was granted asylum. Two separate immigration judges found her claims of persecution in El Salvador credible – in 2018 and again in 2019.
However, both times an immigration board overturned the asylum decision, citing the existence of the red notice.
Authorities claimed the red notice meant that Ms Barahona Martinez was banned from refugee status under a rule called the mandatory non-political crime bar, which is designed to prevent people who have committed crimes abroad from seeking asylum after they have gone on the run.
But for Ms Barahona Martinez, the red notice resulted from – and was evidence of – the very persecution she was escaping.
Nevertheless, she was detained for the entirety of her asylum proceedings.
Ms Grossman said this was because of a disconnect between US policy and practice when it comes to Interpol notices.
‘Fundamental misunderstanding’
Although the US government guidelines state that a red notice should not automatically lead to detention, in practice that is what happens in the immigration system.
“I think this might hopefully be changing in the United States, but it appears in most of these cases that the red notice is sort of looked at as evidence of criminality and often as conclusive evidence of criminality,” Ms Grossman said.
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding in the United States about what a red notice is and is not.”
Ms Grossman believes that if Interpol was more transparent about the ways in which red notices can go wrong, both officials and victims of Interpol abuse would be better equipped to respond.
“It would be really helpful for cases where there’s bogus red notices involved for Interpol to be much more open about the fact that this happens,” she said.
Ms Barahona Martinez’s case came to light after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) met with her on one of their regular tours of detention centres in early 2023.
They then turned to Ms Grossman for specialist help.
When she petitioned Interpol’s review body she received an unusually swift reply telling her the red notice had been deleted.
From shock to panic
Still, Ms Barahona Martinez remained in detention until September last year, when she was released without warning after several interview requests by Sky News and the filing of a habeas petition by the ACLU, which would have seen her case brought before a higher judge.
Read more:
El Salvador opens 40,000-inmate prison in ‘war against gangs’
10,000 police and soldiers to seal off entire El Salvador town
On 28 September, as Ms Barahona Martinez was working in the kitchen at a Louisiana detention centre, an immigration official sought her out to inform her she was being released the following day.
She told Sky News she was so shocked that she told the officer there must have been a mistake.
However, her shock soon turned to panic. After six years inside, she was not sure how she would cope with the outside world or even how to get back to her family.
Jessica Barahona Martinez with her family
“What was I going to find outside? I spoke to my mother, I said to her ‘Mum, what if I get lost?’ It was something that I honestly wasn’t prepared for at the time. And she told me, ‘You’re not going to get lost. We will find you’.”
The day after Ms Barahona was released, US authorities published updated guidance, reiterating that immigration officers shouldn’t detain people solely on the basis of a red notice.
‘Very robust system’
In an earlier episode of Sky News’ Dirty Work podcast, Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock defended the red notice system.
He said: “I think it is a very robust system, and it is a very successful system first and foremost because it helps almost every day around the world to catch dangerous fugitives, murderers, rapists, those who are exploiting children, drug traffickers.”
When asked about people ending up with a notice that should not have been issued, he said: “[It is] a small number of cases, but of course, very often significant cases that end up in the media and where we say, yes, this notice should not have been published.
“Every one of those cases is a case too many because we know the consequences this might have,” he said.
A spokesperson for the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) said: “Regardless of nationality, ICE makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with US law and US department of homeland security policy, considering the circumstances of each case.”
“Liberation day” was due to be on 1 April. But Donald Trump decided to shift it by a day because he didn’t want anyone to think it was an April fool.
It is no joke for him and it is no joke for governments globally as they brace for his tariff announcements.
It is stunning how little we know about the plans to be announced in the Rose Garden of the White House later today.
It was telling that we didn’t see the President at all on Tuesday. He and all his advisers were huddled in the West Wing, away from the cameras, finalising the tariff plans.
Follow the events of Liberation Day live as they unfold
Three key figures are central to it all.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the so-called ‘measured voice’. A former hedge fund manager, he has argued for targeted not blanket tariffs.
Peter Navarro is Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing. A long-time aide and confidante of the president, he is a true loyalist and a firm believer in the merits of tariffs.
His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought – precisely why he appeals to Trump.
The third key character is Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and the biggest proponent of the full-throttle liberation day tariff juggernaut.
The businessman, philanthropist, Trump fundraiser and billionaire (net worth ranging between $1bn and $2bn) has been among the closest to Trump over the past 73 days of this presidency – frequently in and out of the West Wing.
If anything goes wrong, observers here in Washington suspect Trump will make Lutnick the fall guy.
What are Donald Trump’s tariffs, what is ‘liberation day’ and how does it all affect the UK?
And what if it does all go wrong? What if Trump is actually the April fool?
“It’s going to work…” his press secretary said when asked if it could all be a disaster, driving up the cost of living for Americans and creating global economic chaos.
“The president has a brilliant team who have been studying these issues for decades and we are focussed on restoring the global age of America…” Karoline Leavitt said.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘Days of US being ripped off are over’
Dancing to the president’s tune
My sense is that we should see “liberation day” not as the moment it’s all over in terms of negotiations for countries globally as they try to carve out deals with the White House. Rather it should be seen as the start.
Trump, as always, wants to be seen as the one calling the shots, taking control, seizing the limelight. He wants the world to dance to his tune. Today is his moment.
But beyond today, alongside the inevitable tit-for-tat retaliation, expect to see efforts by nations to seek carve-outs and to throw bones to Trump; to identify areas where trade policies can be tweaked to placate the president.
Even small offerings which change little in a material sense could give Trump the chance to spin and present himself as the winning deal maker he craves to be.
One significant challenge for foreign governments and their diplomats in Washington has been engaging the president himself with proposals he might like.
Negotiations take place with a White House team who are themselves unsure where the president will ultimately land. It’s resulted in unsatisfactory speculative negotiations.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Treasury minister: ‘We’ll do everything to secure a deal’
Too much faith placed in the ‘special relationship’?
The UK believes it’s in a better position than most other countries globally. It sits outside the EU giving it autonomy in its trade policy, its deficit with the US is small, and Trump loves Britain.
It’s true too that the UK government has managed to accelerate trade conversations with the White House on a tariff-free trade partnership. Trump’s threats have forced conversations that would normally sit in the long grass for months.
Yet, for now, the conversations have yielded nothing firm. That’s a worry for sure. Did Keir Starmer have too much faith in the ‘special relationship’?
Downing Street will have identified areas where they can tweak trade policy to placate Trump. Cars maybe? Currently US cars into the UK carry a 10% tariff. Digital services perhaps?
US food? Unlikely – there are non-tariff barriers on US food because the consensus seems to be that chlorinated chicken and the like isn’t something UK consumers want.
Easier access to UK financial services maybe? More visas for Americans?
For now though, everyone is waiting to see what Trump does before they either retaliate or relent and lower their own market barriers.
US
Democrat Cory Booker rails against Donald Trump and Elon Musk during marathon Senate speech lasting more than 17 hours
A senior Democrat has taken to the Senate floor to speak against US President Donald Trump – with the 17-plus-hour speech still ongoing.
Cory Booker, a New Jersey senator, began speaking around 7pm (midnight in the UK) and said he intended to disrupt the “normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able”.
Referring to Mr Trump’s presidency, he said: “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”
As of 5pm in the UK, Mr Booker was still speaking, having spoken for more than 17 hours. He has remained standing for the entire duration, as he would lose control of the floor if he left his desk or sat down.
Read more: Who is the Democrat making a marathon speech against Trump?
As of 4pm, Cory Booker has held the Senate floor for more than 16 hours. Pic: Senate Television / AP
Other Democrat senators have joined Mr Booker to ask questions so he can rest his voice, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
At the start of his speech, Mr Booker said: “These are not normal times in our nation. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.
“The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”
Overnight, he referenced Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Read more:
‘Liberation day’ is coming – one number to keep in mind
Prosecutors directed to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
“You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond – after filibustering for 24 hours – you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said ‘I’ve seen the light’,” he said.
“No, we got civil rights because people marched for it, sweat for it and [civil rights leader] John Lewis bled for it.”
Only Mr Thurmond and Republican Senator Ted Cruz – who spoke for 21 hours and 19 minutes against the Affordable Care Act in 2013 – have held the Senate floor for longer than Mr Booker.
Luigi Mangione could face the death penalty over the killing of UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses.
New York does not have the death penalty for state charges, and so he could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case.
But he also faces federal charges over Mr Thompson’s killing – and US attorney general Pamela Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Mangione has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges.
Here’s what we know about him.
Wealth, private school and Ivy League education
Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has links to San Francisco and Hawaii.
His social media lists him as being from Towson, a well-to-do area to the north of the city of Baltimore.
He is the grandson of a wealthy property developer and philanthropist and the cousin of a current Maryland state legislator.
He attended Gilman School – a private all-boys school in Baltimore. The school’s annual fees are up to $37,690 (around £29,000) and it boasts alumni including NFL stars and former senators.
After graduating in 2016, Mangione went to the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s elite Ivy League schools.
According to his social media, he studied computer science and launched a group named UPGRADE (UPenn Game Research and Development Environment).
A university spokesperson said he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees there.
He later co-founded his own computer game company, which focused on small, simplistic games.
Mangione went to a prestigious Ivy League university. Pic: LinkedIn
‘No complaints – a great guy’
According to his LinkedIn page, Mangione moved to California in 2020 and worked for the car-buying website TrueCar. The firm’s boss said he left last year.
Mangione currently lists himself as from Honolulu on LinkedIn, with pictures on Instagram showing him on the Hawaiian island.
In the first half of 2022, he reportedly lived at Surfbreak, a co-living space aimed at remote workers in Honolulu’s Waikiki neighbourhood.
“Luigi was just widely considered to be a great guy. There were no complaints,” Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for Surfbreak’s owner, told the AP news agency.
“There was no sign that might point to these alleged crimes they’re saying he committed.”
Mr Ryan said Mangione left to get surgery on the US mainland for chronic back pain he suffered from since childhood.
Document reveals back condition
Mangione wrote about his health issue online, saying he has spondylolisthesis – a condition where one of the bones in the spine slips forwards.
Sky News’ Data and Forensics team obtained a 14-page document uploaded to his Google Drive account in 2021.
He details the severity of his “injury” as “low grade two” and goes into fitness goals, diet advice and notes about the condition.
The suspect’s notes say he has back condition spondylolisthesis
His X banner image shows a back X-ray
It’s unclear if the condition is linked to the motive, which police have not publicly identified, but it gives context about his health issues.
Analysis of his Goodreads profile also shows he read books including Crooked: Outwitting The Back Pain Industry and Getting On The Road To Recovery, and Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic At The Root Of Most Chronic Disease – And How To Fight It.
A banner image on his X account also features an X-ray of a lower back with screws.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News they are looking at whether the X-ray is Mangione’s or from a relative and whether it’s connected to the shooting.
‘Violence is necessary to survive’
Mangione appears to have had an active social media presence.
His X account regularly shared and reposted pieces about topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, and the future of humanity.
His Goodreads account also gave a four-star review to Industrial Society And Its Future – by notorious US terrorist Theodore Kaczynski.
The piece, which rails against technological advancement, became known as the Unabomber Manifesto after its author began a mail bombing campaign which lasted nearly 20 years.
Three people were killed and dozens were injured before Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996.
The Goodreads review said: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.
“‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”
Luigi Mangione. Pic: Facebook
Why are some calling Mangione a ‘hero’?
A search of social media sites such as Reddit reveals a thread of people who are sympathetic to the suspect.
Highly rated comments on the site include: “Screw the McDonald’s employee that ratted him out” and “Only a matter of time till shirts with #FreeLuigi start popping up”.
To many, these are shocking comments about someone accused of carrying out a cold-blooded killing. But what’s behind them?
Many in the US pay thousands in expensive insurance premiums to cover themselves and their family, while others rely on the Medicare federal insurance programme.
Support for Mangione appears to come from resentment over this and accusations that companies go to great lengths to avoid paying for treatments in order to maximise their profits.
“He got charged with murder quicker than insurance companies deny claims”, said a comment on Reddit with nearly 7,000 likes.
One post that went viral on X before the suspect’s arrest was from Anthony Zenkus, a Columbia University professor.
He wrote: “We mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
Read more from Sky News:
Shooting prompts US healthcare debate
Police shared this picture of the suspect following the shooting. Pic: NYPD
A chart shared widely on X claims to show denial rates by UnitedHealthcare exceed those of competitors, using data from consumer finance website ValuePenguin. This is consistent with publicly available data from 2023 analysed by Sky News.
Other people online appear to be angry about what they say is the disparity between the resources put into Mr Thompson’s case and how less well-off people are treated.
One comment on Reddit with 4,000 likes says: “The murdered guy in death, like in life, is still sucking up a huge undeserved and unwanted portion of resources.
“How many underprivileged people’s murders are going unsolved because NYPD and the feds are spending millions on this overpaid, rich, morally questionable millionaire’s murder.”
Arrested in McDonald’s with ‘ghost gun’
Mangione was detained in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a five-day search, carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID, police said.
He was arrested in Altoona, around 230 miles (370km) west of New York, after a tip-off from a McDonald’s employee who recognised him from the police appeals.
Mangione also had a fake New Jersey ID matching one used by the suspect to check into a hostel before the killing, said New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch.
He was found carrying a “handwritten document” that Ms Tisch said “spoke to both his motivation and mindset”.
Joseph Kenny, New York’s chief of detectives, said it appeared to show “some ill-will towards corporate America”.
Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 (£7,840) – $2,000 of it in foreign currency.
‘Message’ on bullets
Brian Thompson, 50, was chief executive of UnitedHealthcare – the fourth-largest public company in the US behind Walmart, Amazon, and Apple – and was paid about $10m (£7.8m) a year.
It’s the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans and manages insurance for employers and state and federally funded programmes.
Mr Thompson – who was married with two sons – was shot on 4 December as he was walking to a New York hotel where his company was holding an investors’ conference.
CCTV showed a person shooting Mr Thompson from behind. Pic: NYPD/Reuters
As Mr Thompson walked towards the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue, a gunman appeared behind him from between parked cars.
He was shot in the back and calf and died from his injuries.
The words “defend”, “deny”, and “depose” were written on the cases of bullets found at the scene – similar to the title of a book that criticises health insurance companies.
Mr Thompson’s wife said he was an “incredibly loving father to our two sons” and a “loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest”.
UnitedHealthcare called him a “highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him”.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports12 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway