No One Was Meant to Survive

A Harrowing Journey: Venezuelan Migrants Deported to El Salvador’s CECOT

One night in mid-May, some of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador attempted to break the locks on their cells using metal rails from their beds. It was a futile act of defiance; no one expected an escape. Still, the response was swift and brutal. For six consecutive days, the inmates were subjected to lengthy beatings, according to three individuals who recounted their experiences. On the final day, male guards brought in their female colleagues, who struck the naked prisoners as the male guards recorded videos on their phones and laughed. The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners cried out or complained, they would start over.

Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, remembered a prison nurse watching the scene. “Hit the piñata,” she cheered.

When the government of El Salvador opened the prison complex known as CECOT in 2023, the country’s security minister claimed that inmates would only be able to leave “inside a coffin.” This promise has largely held true. Human rights organization Cristosal has documented cases of prisoners being transported out of the jail for urgent medical care, but these inmates died soon after, leaving no opportunity for them to share what life inside the prison was like.

What little is known about life in CECOT comes from media tours staged by President Nayib Bukele, which show men crammed into cells with bare-metal bunkbeds stacked to the ceiling like human shelving. In most of the videos posted online, the men—some with the facial tattoos of the country’s gangs—stand in silence. The Salvadoran government has encouraged CECOT’s terrifying reputation, turning it into a museum where Bukele’s tough-on-gangs tactics can be exhibited for the press. However, media visits are strictly controlled, and interviews with prisoners are rare and tightly supervised.

On Friday, for the first time, a group of prisoners walked out of CECOT’s gates as free men. They were 252 Venezuelans that the Trump administration had deported to El Salvador in March when it alleged—while offering little to no evidence—that they were gang members. This month, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro negotiated a prisoner swap with the United States, releasing 10 American citizens in his custody and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners. In return, the Venezuelans in El Salvador were put on a plane and sent to Caracas. They brought with them detailed accounts of beatings and harsh treatment.

Four former prisoners told me they were punched, kicked, and struck with clubs. They were cut off from contact with their families, deprived of legal help, and taunted by guards. All recalled days spent in a punishment cell known as “the island,” a dark room with no water where they slept on the floor. Those days, the only light they could see came from a dim lightbulb in the ceiling that illuminated a cross.

I spoke with Keider Alexander Flores over the phone just hours after he was dropped off at his mother’s house in Caracas. Flores described how he and his brother left Venezuela in 2023, trekking through the jungles of Panama’s Darién Gap and riding buses all the way to Mexico. They applied for an appointment to cross into the United States legally and arrived in Texas in August. Flores soon settled in Dallas and started an asylum application, but he didn’t complete the process. He found work laying carpet. His real passion was music: He DJed under the name Keyder Flower. In one of his Instagram posts, he flexes his teenage muscles as he plays tracks by a pool.

In December, after a DJ gig at a house party in Dallas, Flores was riding in the passenger seat of a friend’s car when they were pulled over. Flores told me they had smoked marijuana, and the police took them to the station. Later he was sent to ICE detention. At an immigration hearing, the judge told him that he wouldn’t be able to return to the United States for 10 years because he had broken U.S. law. When asked what country he wanted to be deported to, Flores said Venezuela.

While in ICE detention, Flores learned that he had been flagged as “an active member” of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Federal agents showed up to interview him, he said. They had seen his pictures on Instagram and said his hand signals looked suspicious. “I was doing a cool sign, but they said it was a gesture of Tren de Aragua,” Flores told me. Flores knew about CECOT. He had seen videos at the ICE detention center in Texas, where the TV sometimes showed cable news. In mid-March, he called his brother from detention to say that he was about to get deported to Venezuela; two days later, he was put on a plane. ICE guards didn’t let the passengers open the window shades during the flight. Flores and his fellow detainees found out they were in El Salvador only after they had landed.

Another newly released Venezuelan prisoner I spoke with, Juan José Ramos, told me he’d entered the United States legally, with an appointment for an asylum hearing, and had barely settled down in Utah when ICE agents stopped his car on the way to Walmart, arresting him with no explanation. He said that when the men arrived at CECOT, they saw inmates wearing white T-shirts and shorts, heads completely shaved. Ramos asked a Salvadoran guard who these men were and why they were crying. The guard replied: “That’s you. All of you will end up like that. We will treat you all the same.”

Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with shared similar accounts of what happened next. The Venezuelans were taken to a wing of CECOT known as Module 8, with 32 cells, and didn’t interact with the rest of the prisoners. The inmates communicated with one another via hand signals, because when they spoke, they were beaten. They slept on metal bunks, often without mattresses. Soap and juice bottles were luxuries afforded prior to visits by representatives of the Red Cross, who came twice during their four-month stay. Sometimes, the guards gave the prisoners better meals than usual, took pictures with their phones, then took the food away, Ramos, Flores, and others told me.

A riot broke out in April, after guards beat one of the inmates to the point that he started convulsing, Flores told me. The incident convinced the Venezuelans that they had to do something. “If your friend was being beaten, would you leave him alone as they beat him?” Flores asked me.

Seven of the Venezuelans arrived days after the rest, deported from Guantánamo, where a hunger strike had broken out. They suggested doing the same at CECOT. Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with said every inmate they knew joined the hunger strike, which lasted for several days. Some took their protest further by cutting themselves on the corners of their metal bunks. They called that a huelga de sangre: “blood strike.”

Three or four days after the strike started, two prison directors came to negotiate. The inmates agreed to end the strike in exchange for an assurance that the beatings would stop. “They let us live for a while,” Flores told me. But in mid-May, when a few inmates refused to have their cells inspected, the guards beat them. That’s when a second riot broke out. The guards responded by shooting the inmates with pellets. Then came the six days of beatings.

Martínez, 26, told me he was pulled over while driving in El Paso, Texas, in February because his license plate had expired. The officer was ready to let him go with a warning, but asked Martínez to remove his shirt. Martínez had tattoos of Bible verses and the name of his wife. The officer called ICE.

Martínez, who fell ill after the hunger strike, had to be taken to a clinic, where a nurse told him he had suffered serious liver damage. After the beatings, Martínez told me, some inmates vomited blood, and others couldn’t walk for days. “If they’re going to kill us, I hope they kill us soon,” he said he told himself.

The guards told him he would spend the rest of his life in CECOT. Until early Friday morning, when Martínez was sent home as abruptly as he’d arrived, he had believed them.