Venezuelans Deported from USA Tortured in Salvadoran Prison
HAVANA TIMES – The 252 Venezuelans that the US government sent to El Salvador in March and April of 2025 were tortured and subjected to other abuses, including cases of sexual violence, according to a report published November 12th by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Juanita Goebertus, director of HRW’s Americas division, said that “the Trump administration paid El Salvador millions of dollars to arbitrarily detain Venezuelans who were then subjected almost daily to brutal beatings by Salvadoran security forces.”
The government of President Donald Trump “has been complicit in torture, enforced disappearance, and other serious human rights violations, and should stop sending people to El Salvador and to any other country where they risk being tortured,” Goebertus stated.
In its report “They Arrived in Hell: Torture and Other Abuses Against Venezuelans at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot),” established by President Nayib Bukele to imprison alleged members of Salvadoran gangs, HRW provides an analysis of the treatment these deportees received.
In March and April 2025, Washington sent 252 Venezuelans to Cecot, among them dozens of asylum seekers, “despite credible reports of serious human rights violations in Salvadoran prisons,” the report states.
They were sent to a place where they are in danger of torture or persecution — arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, inhumane detention conditions, and, in some cases, sexual violence.
Between March and September 2025, investigators interviewed 40 of the Venezuelans who had been detained at Cecot and another 150 people, including relatives, lawyers, and acquaintances.
Investigators reviewed photographs of injuries, criminal background databases, documents related to the migrants’ legal status in the United States, and data published by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about their deportations.
They also corroborated detainees’ allegations through forensic analyses provided by the Independent Forensic Expert Group and an open-source investigation carried out by the Human Rights Center at the University of California in the United States.
According to information presented in court cases, the US government provided at least $4.7 million dollars to El Salvador to cover the detention costs of the men sent to Cecot.
Roughly half of the Venezuelans sent to Cecot had no criminal convictions, and only three percent had been convicted in the United States of a violent or potentially violent crime.
Other criminal background checks revealed that many had not been convicted of crimes in Venezuela or in other countries where they had lived.
At Cecot, they were subjected to severe physical, verbal, and psychological abuse on a systematic basis by Salvadoran guards and riot police.
These abuses “amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and in many cases, torture, under international human rights law,” HRW notes.
It reports that guards and riot police periodically subjected the Venezuelans to beatings, particularly during daily cell inspections, or for alleged violations of prison rules — such as speaking loudly, showering outside designated hours, or requesting medical attention.
“Every day they came to carry out inspections,” one of them said. “They took us out of the cell, put us in inspection position, kneeling, handcuffed with our hands behind our backs and our arms over our heads, and beat us with batons, kicks, and fists, and then left us kneeling for 30 or 40 minutes,” he recounted.
Several former detainees said that agents beat them after members of the International Committee of the Red Cross interviewed them during the organization’s visit to Cecot in May. One said that guards “kept hitting me in the stomach, and when I tried to catch my breath, I started choking on my own blood.”
Three detainees said they were victims of sexual violence. One of them said that four guards sexually assaulted him, “played with their batons on my body,” and forced him to perform oral sex on one of the officers.
HRW and the Central American human rights organization Cristosal concluded that the cases of torture and mistreatment of Venezuelans at Cecot were not isolated incidents committed by abusive guards or riot police, but systematic human rights violations.
The abuses “appear to be part of a practice designed to subdue, humiliate, and discipline. The brutality and constant repetition of the abuses suggest that guards and police acted with the belief that their superiors supported or, at minimum, tolerated their abusive acts,” the report states.
The Venezuelans were also subjected to inhumane conditions, including scarce and inadequate food, poor hygiene and sanitation, and limited access to medical care and medicines.
Meanwhile, relatives and lawyers told investigators that at least 62 of the Venezuelans were expelled while their US asylum cases were still pending, despite having passed the initial “credible fear” screening that entitled them to a full hearing on their claims.
For weeks, the governments of the United States and El Salvador repeatedly refused to disclose information about the whereabouts or fate of the Venezuelans, which constituted enforced disappearance under international law.
In mid-July, the Salvadoran government sent the 252 people to Venezuela in exchange for 10 U.S. citizens or permanent residents who had been detained by the government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, said that “the US government has not been connected to acts of systematic torture on this scale since Abu Ghraib and the network of secret prisons during the war on terror.”
“Disappearing people at the hands of a government that tortures them goes against the principles that have historically made the United States a nation of laws,” Bullock added.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.