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Edicson David Quintero Chacón challenges his prolonged, unconstitutional detention through a habeas corpus lawsuit. He is one of more than two hundred people the U.S. government has been paying to imprison, incommunicado, at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) since mid-March. Despite his pending federal lawsuit challenging his indefinite detention, the U.S. government sent him to El Salvador, where he could remain in prison for the rest of his life. Mr. Quintero’s amended habeas petition seeks release from CECOT.
Mr. Quintero, originally from Venezuela, is a 28-year-old carpenter, fisherman, and father of two young children. He turned himself in to immigration officers when he came to the U.S. border in 2024. ICE later took him into custody during a routine ICE check-in and held him while an immigration court was determining whether he should be deported from the United States solely because he lacked immigration status. Eventually, he gave up fighting his deportation to Venezuela in immigration court. After eight difficult months in ICE custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA, he filed a habeas petition in February 2025. He asked a federal court to order that the government could not keep holding him for no reason, since deportations to Venezuela were not possible. Instead of responding to Mr. Quintero’s lawsuit, the government sent him to CECOT, where his living nightmare continues.
The U.S. government has no statutory or constitutional authority to detain Mr. Quintero in a foreign prison—especially one with a well-known record of inhumane conditions and torture. The Fifth Amendment and immigration laws prohibit his indefinite detention.
The American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Project, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed an amended habeas petition in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on Mr. Quintero’s behalf.
