New Delhi, Aug. 29 -- DALLAS - Carlos Tellez Sanchez spent fifteen hours in handcuffs over the Atlantic. When the plane landed he was in Liberia, a West African country wedged between Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire, thousands of miles from the wife and the five month old son he had left behind in Texas. The boy is an American citizen. His father now lives in a hotel more than an hour outside Monrovia, sharing it with deportees from Brazil, Colombia and Honduras.

Tellez Sanchez is 35. He left Venezuela five years ago and asked the United States for asylum. In 2021 an immigration judge agreed that he should not be sent back, granting him protection from removal to Venezuela. That protection was never overturned. It was routed around.

This...