US Edition
‘Hell on Earth’: Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse
- Carlos Daniel Terán and more than 250 Venezuelan detainees were released from El Salvador's CECOT prison on July 18, 2025, in a U.S.-Venezuela prisoner exchange.
- They had been sent to CECOT by the U.S. Trump administration under the Alien Enemies Act, accused without evidence of gang ties to Tren de Aragua.
- Former detainees described harsh conditions including lack of mattresses, no phone or internet access, extreme heat, beatings, sexual abuse, and constant fear inside CECOT.
- Human rights expert Noah Bullock said detainees faced torture and forced disappearance as they were held without trial or conviction and denied legal contact.
- The release suggests possible acknowledgment of due process violations and raises concerns about the legality of detaining migrants in harsh conditions without evidence.
96 Articles
96 Articles
‘Welcome to hell’: Freed migrants tell of horrors in Salvadoran jail
MARACAIBO, July 28 — Mervin Yamarte left Venezuela with his younger brother, hoping for a better life. But after a perilous jungle march, US detention, and long months in a Salvadoran jail surviving riots, beatings and fear, he has returned home a wounded and changed man.On entering the sweltering Caribbean port of Maracaibo, the first thing Yamarte did after hugging his mother and six-year-old daughter was to burn the baggy white prison shorts …
Venezuelan migrant Andry Hernández Romero remembers the bittersweet night before being sent on a flight from the United States to the Center for Confining Terrorism (Cecot) of El Salvador, a place where he recounts that he lived a “hell.” Without notice, he was deported, accused of belonging to a criminal gang for his tattoos. There he lost his freedom, his hair—as a stylist, an important part of his identity—and any connection with the outside …
Venezuelan Mervin Yamarte believed that in the United States he would achieve the dream of offering his family a better future, but ended up in an infamous prison in El Salvador, a victim of constant beatings and abuse. Minutes after arriving at his home in Maracaibo, almost 10 hours’ drive west of Caracas, he hugs his wife and six-year-old daughter. And he burns the wide white shorts he used in his four-month “hell” at the Center for Confining …
‘Hell on Earth’: Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse
Carlos Daniel Terán, 19, still remembers the words a prison warden told him when he entered El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT.“He told us we were never going to leave this place,” Terán recalled.It was March of this year. Terán had just been transferred from an immigration detention center in Texas to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — known as CECOT — a maximum-security prison built to house accused Salvadoran gang members. E…
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