US/El Salvador: Torture of Venezuelan Deportees

In March and April 2025, the US government sent 252 Venezuelans, including dozens of asylum seekers, to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT) mega prison in El Salvador, despite credible reports of serious human rights abuses in El Salvador’s prisons.

The Venezuelans were subject to refoulement—being sent to where they would face torture or persecution—arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, inhumane detention conditions and, in some cases, sexual violence.

“The Trump administration paid El Salvador millions of dollars to arbitrarily detain Venezuelans who were then abused by Salvadoran security forces on a near-daily basis,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

“The Trump administration is complicit in torture, enforced disappearance, and other grave violations, and should stop sending people to El Salvador or any other country where they face a risk of torture.”

Between March and September 2025, researchers interviewed 40 of the Venezuelans who had been held in CECOT, and 150 of their relatives, lawyers, and acquaintances.

Researchers reviewed photographs of injuries, criminal record databases, documents related to these individuals’ immigration status in the United States, and data released by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on its deportations.

Researchers also corroborated detainees’ allegations through forensic analyses provided by the Independent Forensic Expert Group and open-source research by the University of California, Berkeley Human Rights Center’s Investigation Lab.

Human Rights Watch and Cristosal requested information from the US and Salvadoran governments about these detentions, but received no response.

The US government reportedly provided at least US$4.7 million to El Salvador including to cover costs of detaining the men. Some Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had been seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing persecution in Venezuela.

Human Rights Watch and Cristosal found that roughly half the Venezuelans sent to CECOT had no criminal history, and only 3 percent had been convicted in the United States of a violent or potentially violent offense.

Additional background checks showed that many had not been convicted of crimes in Venezuela or other Latin American countries where they had lived.

Relatives and lawyers said that at least 62 of the Venezuelans were removed amid their asylum process in the United States and despite having passed their initial “credible fear” screening, which gave them the right to a full hearing on their asylum claims before an immigration judge.

Three said they had arrived in the United States after being fully vetted and processed through the Safe Mobility Offices program established by the US government.

The US and Salvadoran governments repeatedly refused to disclose information about the Venezuelans’ fate or whereabouts in what amounted to enforced disappearances under international law.

Cristosal helped relatives to file 76 habeas corpus petitions before El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which failed to rule on their cases.

The people held in CECOT were subjected to regular and severe physical, verbal, and psychological abuse by Salvadoran prison guards and riot police. Under international human rights law, the abuses constituted cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and in many cases, torture.

Prison guards and riot police regularly beat Venezuelans including during daily cell searches, for minor rule violations—such as speaking loudly or showering at the wrong time—or for requesting medical assistance.

“Guards came to search the cells every day,” one of them said. “They took us all out of our cells, made us kneel, handcuffed our hands behind our backs and put our arms on our heads, and beat us with batons, kicks and fists … and then left us kneeling for 30 or 40 minutes.”

Several former detainees said that officers beat them after they spoke with International Committee of the Red Cross staff members during their May visit to CECOT. One of them said guards “kept hitting me, in the stomach, and when I tried to breathe, I started to choke on the blood.”

Three people held in CECOT said they were subjected to sexual violence. One said four guards sexually abused him and forced him to perform oral sex on one of them. “They played with their batons on my body,” he said.

Human Rights Watch and Cristosal concluded that the cases of torture and ill-treatment of Venezuelans in CECOT were not isolated incidents by rogue guards or riot police, but rather systematic violations.

The abuses appear to have been part of a practice designed to subjugate, humiliate, and discipline detainees, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal said.

The brutality and repeated nature of the abuses also appear to indicate that guards and riot police acted on the belief that their superiors either supported or, at the very least, tolerated their abusive acts.

The Venezuelans were held in inhumane conditions, with scarce and inadequate food, poor hygiene and sanitation, limited access to health care and medicine, and no access to recreation or education.

In mid-July, the Salvadoran government sent the 252 people to Venezuela in exchange for 10 US citizens or permanent residents who had been detained in many cases arbitrarily. Venezuela has experienced a humanitarian crisis and systematic human rights violations under the Nicolás Maduro administration, which have compelled nearly 8 million people to flee.

“The US government has not been linked to acts of systematic torture on this scale since Abu Ghraib and the network of clandestine prisons during the war on terror,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal.

“Disappearing people into the hands of a government that tortures them runs against the very principles that historically made the United States a nation of laws.”

*SOURCE: Human Rights Watch. Go to ORIGINAL: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/12/us/el-salvador-torture-of-venezuelan-deportees 2025 Human Wrongs Watch