A makeup artist seeking asylum in the US after fleeing Venezuela claims he was wrongly identified as a gang member and sent to a hellhole prison in El Salvador. Andrys Cedeno-Gil, 31, crossed the border into California from Tijuana last year to escape persecution for his homosexuality, his lawyers said. He waited months in detention for an immigration court hearing on March 13, but instead was put one of three planes with 237 other migrants and deported. But Cedeno-Gil was not sent back to Venezuela. Instead he was flown to El Salvador and detained at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). He and the others on board are accused by the Trump Administration of being members of Tren de Aragua, a fearsome Venezuelan gang active in the US. However, 137 of them were deported without due process under an obscure 1798 law not used since World War II, and many of their families claim they are not gang members. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump Administration was 'not going to reveal operational details about a counterterrorism operation' when asked about the evidence that detainees were actually gang members. Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said Cedeno-Gil was one of many falsely accused because of his tattoos. 'His tattoos are benign. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is Tren de Aragua,' she said. 'His attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.' Photos of Cedeno-Gil showed he has a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his left forearm and what appears to be a floral design around his elbow. His lawyers called them tattoos that you might see on any arts student at a café in New York or Los Angeles. Lawyers for another migrant shipped off to El Salvador said his tattoo that ICE claimed was Tren de Aragua was actually the Real Madrid soccer team logo. The Department of Homeland Security in that case alleged other evidence confirmed his membership of the gang. ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com requests for comment on Cedeno-Gil's case. Toczylowski said Cedeno-Gil entered the US legally as an asylum-seeker, with an appointment to seek protection in the US from persecution. 'He has a strong claim. He was detained at entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang related. They are absolutely not,' she said. 'He is a makeup artist who loves theater. He is a gay man. He is close to his family.' Toczylowski said he passed a credible fear interview, which immigration officers use to determine if asylum-seekers have reasonable grounds for their claim. Whether he was detained or not, he would then go before an immigration court to determine if he was a genuine refugee - but he never got the chance. Cedeno-Gil's lawyers said the last they heard from him was hours before an immigration court hearing on March 13, where they planned to present evidence that he was an innocent makeup artist, not a gangster. But when the hearing began, ICE did not produce him, and the government lawyer didn't know why, or where he was. The judge put off the hearing until March 17 while Cedeno-Gil's lawyers frantically searched for him at the detention facility in Texas, but were told he had been moved. By March 15 he had disappeared from the ICE online detainee locator system and his lawyers began to fear the worst. ICE again failed to produce Cedeno-Gil at the March 17 hearing, but this time confirmed he had been deported to El Salvador. Toczylowski said the Judge asked 'how has he been removed if there is no removal order?' and the ICE attorney replied that they didn't know. 'Our client was falsely accused of gang affiliation, was given no chance to refute it, then was disappeared by ICE and sent to a prison in El Salvador,' she said. 'Before seeking asylum, he’d never even been incarcerated or arrested. And now he sits in a prison notorious for human rights abuses.' Toczylowski said another hearing was set for two weeks later, but they have no way of contacting Cedeno-Gil in El Salvador. 'ICE told us they won’t facilitate our communication with him or make him available for his next hearing,' she said. Time photojournalist Philip Holsinger, who has spent months in El Salvador investigating the country's transformation under stongman president Nayib Bukele, happened to be at the airstrip where the planes landed. He described how some of the detainees allegedly tried to take over one of the planes, so security at the tarmac was tight and treatment particularly brutal. They were herded onto buses and driven 25 miles to the prison, where they were physically abused as a show of dominance. Holsinger described the beating of a gay barber whom many believe could be Cedeno-Gil, as he was prepared for detention. 'The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, "I'm not a gang member. I'm gay. I'm a barber",' he wrote. 'I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected - he wasn’t a tattooed monster. 'The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.' Holsinger continued to follow the man who may be Cedeno-Gil through the brutal intake process. 'Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste,' he wrote. 'The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. 'The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.' The vivid account detailed how detainees were then stripped naked and their possessions put in black garbage bags to be thrown away along with their hair. Toczylowski said there was no way to be certain the gay barber Holsinger described was Cedeno-Gil, as there was no way to contact inmates, but it 'could be' him. CECOT is a notorious prison where inmates are subjected to extremely harsh treatment and live in overcrowded cells without basic essentials. Inmates are herded into cold, sparse cells with 80 men crammed into each, with no sheets, pillows or even mattresses - just hard steel bedframes. They have nothing to occupy them, such as TV or books, and aren't even allowed to speak to each other. There are only two toilets, and lights are on around the clock. Every pavilion also has its own windowless cell where unruly prisoners are sent. The same meal is served every day, and has to be eaten by hand as utensils aren't allowed. Phone calls and visitors, even family and lawyers, are banned. Inmates spend 23 and a half hours locked in their overcrowded cells, with just 30 minutes to stretch - chained in the middle of the hallway. Within the cells, the temperature can reach a staggering 95 degree during the day, and there is no other source of ventilation. Stunning images taken from within the complex usually show inmates shirtless in white shorts as they attempt to keep cool. CECOT has been called a 'black hole of human rights,' with 'horrific overcrowding, disease, systematic denial of food, clothing medicine, and basic hygiene'. The $100 million penitentiary, the largest in Latin America, was constructed over a span of seven months in 2022 as part of Bukele's plan to reign in street gangs after more than 60 people were murdered on March 26, 2022. The jail is on 410 acres of land, including 57 that were set aside to build eight pavilions surrounded by a 36-foot-tall and 1.3-mile-long wall. It houses at least 13,000 inmates, with a capacity for 40,000, eclipsing the Marmara Penitentiaries Campus in Istanbul, Turkey. The mega-prison is equipped with a system that blocks inmates from contacting the outside world with cellphones. To enter the jail, staffers, guards and prisoners have to go through a complex registration system before they travel through three sections safeguarded by gates. Tren de Aragua was linked to kidnapping, extortion, organized crime and contract killings in the United States. It became a household name after video of them storming an apartment near Denver surfaced in August. The White House has slapped down questions about the people who got deported, saying those asking about it are in favor of violent gang attacks on Americans. Trump made the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which he claimed allowed him to ignore due process. Its most recent application was during World War II, when it was used for the internment of Germans, Italians, and about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American civilians. The law was also used during World War I and the War of 1812. Trump declared the US was facing an 'invasion' from a criminal organization that has been linked to kidnapping, extortion, organized crime, and contract killings. He claimed that he was justified in invoking the act to deport Tren de Aragua members because he claims the gang has ties to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Under his order, all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are determined to be members of the gang, are within the US and are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the country are 'liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies'. Judge Hames Boasberg blocked the use of the wartime law, but was only able to do so when the deportees were already in international airspace. He had ordered the planes to return to the US, but because he never included it in his written order the Trump administration was able to claim it did not disobey the order.