What the Deported Venezuelans Went Through in El Salvador

"Earlier this year, the United States deported 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador and paid its government to imprison them, despite clear evidence of human-rights abuses in the country's prison system and forceful warnings that the men would suffer cruel and unusual treatment. Now two human-rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and the Central America-based Cristosal, have found that all of those men were physically abused."

"Citing prisoner testimony, their report claims that the men were held in filthy cells, psychologically tortured, and given fetid water to drink, and that guards sexually violated at least three of them. Titled "' 'You Have Arrived in Hell': Torture and Other Abuses Against Venezuelans in El Salvador's Mega Prison," the report draws on interviews with 40 of the Venezuelans who were held at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, and echoes the findings of New York Times interviews with former prisoners."

"The researchers who produced the report vetted the detainees' accounts with corroborating information from fellow prisoners, as well as with lawyers, relatives, and forensic experts who examined photographs of their injuries (including a crooked nose, a missing front tooth, and two enduring marks left by rubber-coated bullets). If even a fraction of the allegations are true, the U.S. is complicit in sadistic acts that our own laws forbid."

Two human-rights organizations documented that 252 Venezuelans deported by the United States to El Salvador were detained at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) and all suffered physical abuse. Interviews with 40 detainees, corroborated by fellow prisoners, lawyers, relatives, and forensic experts, recorded injuries including a crooked nose, a missing front tooth, and marks from rubber-coated bullets. Many detainees reported filthy cells, psychological torture, fetid drinking water, and forced beatings by guards and riot police during arrival. At least three detainees were sexually violated by guards. Many deportees were noncriminal migrants or people fleeing political persecution or poverty, not gang members.

Read at The Atlantic