Salt Lake City, Utah – Today, the law firm of Parker & McConkie is filing a notice of intent to sue the U.S. government in federal court to recover $56 million in damages for personal injuries to its client. View the full press conference here.

Attorney Jim McConkie said, “Our client is a young Venezuelan man who came into the U.S. legally to escape threats of violence by the Venezuelan government against his family for their opposition to the Maduro regime.” McConkie emphasized that “our client has no criminal record either in the U.S. or in Venezuela.”

To protect the client from public and government harassment, his name is not being made public at this time in favor of a pseudonym—Johnny Hernandez—to protect him from public and private harassment.

Brent Ward, a past United States Attorney for Utah and present member of the Parker & McConkie firm, said, “Mr. Hernandez was unlawfully detained by ICE and summarily deported to an El Salvadoran prison known as CECOT—a maximum security mega prison (capacity 40,000) plagued by overcrowding, lack of medical care, regular beatings, torture and an egregious history of inmate deaths while in custody.”

Mr. McConkie said, “The Trump Administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison where he suffered torture, shooting, beatings and solitary confinement.”

Mr. McConkie commented further that, “When the U.S. government knowingly and purposefully violates the law by detaining and deporting innocent individuals on false charges and is not held responsible, the individual rights of not just legal immigrants but all Americans are placed in jeopardy. Our client suffered catastrophic injuries in CECOT from which he will never fully recover. Failing to demand accountability now places all Americans in jeopardy in the future.”

Richard Lambert, past Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah and another present member of the Parker & McConkie law firm, said, “This case is vitally important to all Utahns because ICE now proposes to incarcerate 7,000-10,000 people in a megaprison in Utah. The vast majority of inmates there will be people who are innocent of any serious crime. Such a facility invites the kinds of abuses that have been documented at CECOT.”

For questions and media requests, please contact David Watkins, Senior Publicist at Otter PR, at david.watkins@otterpr.com, or visit parkerandmcconkie.com.