Migrants Freed From El Salvador Prison Allege Torture

After spending four months incarcerated in El Salvador’s notoriously brutal prison system after President Donald Trump’s administration wrongfully sent them there, recently freed Venezuelan migrant men are speaking out about the abuse and torture they endured in the foreign gulag. 

The over 250 Venezuelan migrants the Trump administration deported to El Salvador’s Tererorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March were released and sent to Venezuela earlier this month in a prisoner swap between the U.S. and the Maduro government. Freed men who spoke to various news outlets described psychological, physical, and sexual abuse during their stay in CECOT, which took place as they were deprived of due process rights and contact with their lawyers and families. 

Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, a man with no criminal record who was detained after being asked to appear at an immigration appointment, told ProPublica in a report published Wednesday that men who refused to have their heads shaved upon their arrival in El Salvador were beaten by guards, their screams serving as warnings to other inmates to comply. Blanco added that the cuffs and shackles he was restrained with were too tight to walk properly, and that he was beaten to the point of passing out by the guards, who dragged him to a cell. 

“I’d rather die or kill myself than to keep living through this experience. Being woken up every day at 4 a.m. to be insulted and beaten. For wanting to shower, for asking for something so basic. … Hearing your brothers getting beaten, crying for help,” Juan José Ramos Ramos, another man imprisoned at CECOT despite having no criminal record, told ProPublica. 

José Manuel Ramos Bastidas told The Guardian that he and other inmates were frequently shot at with rubber bullets by CECOT guards, who told them they should expect to remain in the prison for 30 to 90 years if Trump wanted to keep them there.

In a horrific scene that recalls the brutal images of prisoner torture that took place in Abu Ghraib, former inmate Tito Martínez described to The Atlantic six consecutive days of intense beatings. On the last day, the CECOT guards reportedly brought in a group of female guards, who beat them as their male counterparts recorded videos. Martinez said a prison nurse yelled “hit the piñata” in encouragement as she watched. 

Salvadoran inmates and human rights groups have described CECOT as the front-facing propaganda center for President Nayib Bukele‘s brutal prison system, which exists largely  outside of established due process. Human rights groups have documented the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of inmates in CECOT and other Salvadoran prisons. Torture, beatings, medical neglect, and malnutrition are common, and the brutal conditions fostered by the Salvadoran government were well known before the Trump administration selected CECOT as the location for its own showcase of brutality against migrants. Trump has been chummy with Bukele, inviting him to the White House in April and even floating sending American citizens to foreign jails, including CECOT. 

As the men who were tortured as a result of the joint machinations of the American and Salvadoran governments attempt to rebuild their lives, one of the Trump administration figures who helped send them to CECOT has been elevated to a lifelong position as a federal judge. 

On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Emil Bove as a federal judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The confirmation took place despite two whistleblower complaints  against Bove alleging that he and other members of the Justice Department conspired to mislead the courts about the administration’s intent to deport the migrants to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act. 

According to a whistleblower complaint filed in June by former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni, Bove said during a March meeting shortly before the deportations to El Salvador that the DOJ might just need to tell the courts “fuck you” if they attempted to interfere with their plans. Days later, a lawyer present at the meeting told D.C. District Judge James Boasberg said that he had no clue if the administration planned to imminently deport the migrants. In reality, the planes carrying the men to El Salvador were already being loaded and mobilized.  

Last week, Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, another migrant held in CECOT, moved to sue the Trump administration. “I want to clear my name,” Leon Rengel — who like many of those deported was accused of being a terrorist gang member despite having no criminal record —  told The New York Times. “I am not a bad person.”

It’s likely others will follow suit.