U.S. immigration authorities last month sent a well-known former Ecuadorean official back to his home country after an appeals panel overturned a decision that had stopped his removal because of fears he would be tortured, The New York Times reported.
José Serrano, who once served as interior minister under Rafael Correa, is now in a maximum-security prison in Ecuador. His lawyers said he was told that video showing him stripped naked would be given to President Daniel Noboa. Officials in Ecuador have denied that Serrano was mistreated.
Noboa posted online minutes after U.S. records showed Serrano had been put on a small charter flight to Ecuador. “We said it, we did it,” Noboa wrote in Spanish. The post included a photo of Serrano in shackles, standing between two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Immigration appeals panel overturned protection from removal in a single day
Serrano later became president of Ecuador’s National Assembly. Court records show he entered the United States in 2021 on a tourist visa and applied for asylum the same year. While living in the United States, he kept posting on social media and criticized Noboa.
ICE arrested him in Miami last year, days after Noboa met privately in Ecuador with Kristi Noem, who was then homeland security secretary. Homeland Security spokesman Chandler Rebel said claims that Serrano was held for political reasons were “categorically false.” Rebel said, “What makes someone a target of ICE is being in the country illegally.”
Prosecutors in Ecuador have accused Serrano of planning the 2023 killing of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. Serrano has denied any role in that attack. In U.S. proceedings, he admitted telling federal agents he took about $575,000 in bribes from two government contractors while serving as interior minister.
Judge Romy Lerner in Miami, appointed during the Biden administration, held four days of hearings. She ruled Serrano could not receive asylum because he had committed a “serious nonpolitical crime.”
She also found he was likely to be jailed and tortured if sent back to Ecuador. Lerner noted that seven of 13 people arrested in the Villavicencio case had been found “dead or murdered” in Ecuadorian prisons and pointed to United Nations findings about former official Jorge Glas.
On May 13, Lerner granted Serrano a deferral of removal. She called his testimony “credible” and did not decide whether he took part in the assassination.
The Homeland Security Department submitted its written brief to the Board of Immigration Appeals at 4:06 p.m. on Aug. 27, court records show. At 3:12 p.m. the following day, three appellate judges unanimously reversed Lerner’s order. They said they did not find it likely Serrano would be tortured in Ecuador. They wrote that harm suffered by Glas had not been shown to have been “intentionally inflicted with the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering.”
Keith Hunsucker authored the decision. Each of the three judges had previously worked at the Homeland Security Department. Charles Adkins-Blanch, a former member of the appeals board, said, “I can’t recall a case ever moving that quickly.” He also said, “It’s highly unusual.”
Court records show Serrano was on a plane to Ecuador within five hours of the ruling. Noboa said he was being held at El Encuentro, a prison modeled on El Salvador’s CECOT facility. In the post that showed Serrano shackled between ICE agents, Noboa also wrote, directed at Correa, “You’re next.”
Attorney Catherine Walker said a member of Serrano’s legal team in Ecuador spoke with him last week for the first time since the deportation. She said “three unidentified masked guards” watched the video call. “The little information Mr. Serrano could provide during the call was appalling,” Walker said. She said the guards photographed and filmed Serrano while he was naked and told him that “the footage would be sent to President Daniel Noboa.”
Serrano’s lawyers have asked a U.S. federal appeals court to order his return. They said the removal happened too fast for them to seek review in federal court beforehand. The appeal hinges on whether the removal violated due process, a question that federal courts have recently scrutinized in immigration cases, including a federal appeals court ruling against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Justice Department spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said she could not discuss individual cases and added that the Trump administration was “restoring integrity to the immigration adjudication system.” The Times reported that the State Department and Noboa’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Published: Sep 17, 2026 01:15 pm