THEIR GANG

by Eric D. Goodman

 

 

The number of people deported to El Salvador from the U.S. nearly doubled in the first months of 2026, according to official figures, coming as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has positioned himself as an ally willing to help the Trump administration accelerate deportations, a central priority. —NBC, May 14, 2026

I never ran with them.
Never wore the ink, flashed the signs,
never whispered the names in the dark.

 

But here, names do not matter.
Here, I am Tren de Aragua.
I am what they say I am.

 

They came at dawn,
boots on stairs, fists on doors,
faces like chiseled ice when they took me—
no trial, no questions.

 

A plane filled with men, young and old,
some killers, thieves, rapists,
but some like me, descent hombres—

wrong place, wrong time,
wrong side of the administration’s priorities.

 

An old law book dusted off:

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798,
shoved into the asshole-mouth

that spews hate without discretion,
sees an enemy in every shadow,
hugs the flag and says,
“this is how we take our country back.”

 

The judge says, “this is not the way,”
insists laws must live in the present,

that due process and justice must

precede punishment.

The right calls the judge a traitor,
questions the authority of the courts,

defies his judgement,

calls for his robes,

his job, his head.

“Why do they love criminals?”

the foxes scream on TV,

“Why do they want Venezuelan gangs

running the streets in America?”

as though they don’t understand or care

about rights or laws.

Never a whisper for the ones like me,
the ones who swept floors, carried bricks,

worked fields, who built and provided for this country,
sent money home so a sister could eat.

 

Now I sit in a Salvadorian prison

on ice-cold stone,
back against the wall, breath slow,
my name already dissolving.

 

Tren de Aragua was born in a prison,
and here, they still reign.
They control the water, the food,
who wakes up and who does not.

They are hermandad,
but I am no brother to them.
They smell it, this fear on me,
this foreignness, this lack of appropriate ink.

 

A blade scrapes concrete—
someone sharpening the night.

Eyes flick my way.
They know I do not belong.

 

That might save me.
That might kill me.

 

 

Author’s Note: This poem is rooted in the real-world deportations of March 2025, when the United States invoked a 1798 wartime law to transfer hundreds of Venezuelan deportees directly to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Investigative news reports documented that some laborers with no demonstrated gang ties were mistakenly swept up in the raids. The speaker in “Their Gang” is a fictional composite. The poem steps away from the headlines to imagine the visceral terror of an ordinary civilian suddenly stripped of due process and left to survive in a violent foreign prison dominated by gangs.  

 

 

More than 100 of Eric D. Goodman's poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines. His poetry collection Faraway Tables (Yorkshire Publishing, 2023) was an Amazon #1 Bestseller in Poetry. In addition to poetry, hundreds of his short stories, articles, and travel stories have been published in magazines and journals, and he's the author of seven books, most of them fiction.

SNOW WHITE VISITS JAIL FOR A PHOTO OP

by Michelle DeRose

Kristi Noem wears gold Rolex to inspect tattooed inmates at El-Salvador mega-prison —Yahoo! news, March 28, 2025

Everything so black and white.
Her long-sleeved tee, teasingly tucked.
Black ball cap, curled tresses.
Their shirtless tattoos lined up
an aisle of canned beans.
Shaven heads beneath harsh lights.
A long shot—men stacked
like face-masked firewood in the hold.
Her lipstick. Gold around her wrist.
Their cuffs. Her arsenal.

Professor Emerita of English, Michelle DeRose lives and writes in Michigan, where one of the most prestigious state universities in the nation just announced its closure of its DEI offices. She wishes she were Canadian.

MEDICAL ADVICE TO WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE

by Joan Mazza

El Salvador wants women to avoid getting pregnant until 2018, out of concern for the Zika virus rampaging through Latin America. Zika virus can cause serious birth defects, a fact that has led several Latin American countries to ask local women to hold off on getting pregnant until the outbreak is under control. El Salvador, however, is the first to announce a two-year ban on baby-making. “We’d like to suggest to all the women of fertile age that they take steps to plan their pregnancies, and avoid getting pregnant between this year and next,” El Salvador’s Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Espinoza told Reuters. Here’s the problem: Abortions are illegal in El Salvador, and birth control is hard to come by. The irony, which seems lost on El Salvador, is that the same government that denies women control over their reproductive health is now asking those same women to control their reproductive health until 2018. —Vocativ, Jan. 26, 2016.  Photo: AP

The women of El Salvador are told to not get pregnant,
to postpone starting a family. Poor women without
access to reliable birth control, single women,
girls who are raped are being told to delay families,
delay their planned pregnancies. The Zika virus

causes birth defects. More than four thousand
babies have already been born with tiny heads,
impaired cognitive functions, plus other yet-to-be-
diagnosed disabilities. Mosquitoes are carriers.
Tell them to cover up to avoid being bitten

by mosquitoes, to dress in the equivalent
of a burka. Tell them not to tempt the men who
rape them because of their skimpy clothes,
long legs, pouty lips, absence of power.

Already-pregnant women hold their bellies,
wonder what they carry, what life they
will have. How will they work and care
for these children? Abortion is illegal.
Spray poison, spray standing water, drain

swimming pools. Tell them to slather
their bodies in DEET. Tell women not to travel
to infected countries if they are pregnant
or plan to be. Aedes aegypti is an aggressive biter.

You might as well tell them not to buy yachts
or furs or SUVs or private jets. These luxuries
harm habitats, hurt the planet. Consider those
whose heads are so small they can’t see straight.
Consider the many with impaired cognition.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.