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Plano Man Deported For Role In El Salvador Massacre

Arnoldo Antonio Vásquez testified he did not commit any crimes
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Photo: Cavan-Images | Shutterstock

A Plano man was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported after being linked to human rights violations as a military officer during the 1988 civil war in El Salvador.

Sixty-year-old Arnoldo Antonio Vásquez, a former second lieutenant in the Salvadoran military, was deported back to the county this month, according to The Dallas Morning News. Vásquez was prosecuted for unlawfully procuring his U.S. citizenship.

He was accused of failing to disclose a prior arrest and detention for his alleged involvement in the 1988 massacre of 10 unarmed Salvadoran civilians near San Sebastian during a 12-year civil war that left 75,000 people dead.

The Justice Department, in its original complaint, noted the charges were dropped in 1990 by the Salvadoran government, making the investigation more complicated. The U.S. government lost the civil case in federal court, but later won on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit when the judges reversed that decision in June 2021.

During the federal trial in 2018, Vásquez testified to have relinquished his command when he was ordered to carry out the killings by a superior officer. He claimed that he killed no one near San Sebastian and wasn’t at the execution site.

Vásquez said he was not detained or jailed in El Salvador, instead, said he was held in military quarters during the investigation of the San Sebastian killings. He also noted that he was able to go to the gym and eat in the mess hall.

“Although he may have refused to actually shoot civilians, we find that the former officer ‘assisted’ and ‘participated in the commission of’ extrajudicial killings during the [Salvadoran] Civil War, rendering him statutorily ineligible to assume the ‘high privilege’ of American citizenship,” the 5th Circuit judges explained. 

Vásquez first came to Texas in 1999 with lawful status and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2004. He was living in Plano with his family during the time of his arrest. 

The investigation and prosecution were conducted by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit focused on human rights violators and war crimes.