Photos of Lewis’ teeth, where one of his front teeth is missing, and Daniel’s nose, where his septum is clearly deviated, are some of the evidence collected in the report. they came to hellpublished this Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. The document reveals torture and other ill-treatment of Venezuelans in El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center (Secot), Nayib Boucle’s mega-prison. There are also images of round scars on Mateo’s hand and Carlos’ chest, both of which were shot at close range with rubber bullets while being held in a cell at the prison.
Nearly four months after 252 Venezuelan migrants endured the worst part of their nightmare, the effects are still visible. U.S. immigration police detained them at various times, cities, and settings, including in raids, in their homes, and while crossing the border, and on March 15 of this year, President Donald Trump decided to invoke the Hostile Alien Act, charge them as members of the Aragua train gang, and send them to prison in El Salvador. They experienced the fear of being beaten on a daily basis. After an agreement between the governments mediated by the church, the government finally decided to send them to Venezuela on July 18. Venezuela was also a country that some people left long ago to escape political persecution. Nicolas Maduro’s government extradited 10 imprisoned Americans to Washington in exchange for the Venezuelans.
Relying on the NGO Cristosar, research centers, archives, and forensic experts, HRW reconstructed the Sekot torture system based on the testimony of Venezuelans who remained for four months and three days in a place built so that almost no one could leave. The report protects the identities of the 40 victims they directly interviewed to build the case for 130 of the 252 Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to Central American prisons, as well as the dozens of family members, friends and attorneys they spoke with. Their names were changed out of fear of reprisals and because some of them have taken legal action against the U.S. and Salvadoran governments.
Daniel suffered a broken nose after participating in an interview conducted by International Red Cross staff with a group of Venezuelan prisoners on May 7. He was beaten with a cane and punched in the nose, causing him to bleed profusely. “They continued to punch me in the stomach, and when I tried to breathe air, I began to choke on blood. Those blows deflected my nose,” the report states.
He wasn’t the only one. “After the interview, they came in the afternoon and took us out of the cell to the search area. Then they beat us again and said it was because we had told the Red Cross about the beating,” Flavio said. “They only put me down that afternoon, but they put down other classmates all week after that.” But the detainee said it was the mental torture that affected him the most. “The most difficult thing was when the guards told us that we would never get out of there, that our families had given us up for dead.”The words they often repeated were: “The only way to get out of here (Sekot) is in a black bag.” In other words, it’s dead. 252 Venezuelans can know that.
the most severe beating
On the eve of visits, including three visits by the Red Cross in May and June and a visit by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March, residents were given bedding, pillows and personal hygiene products to improve conditions. After the customers left, items were taken and the beatings intensified. A few days before they were finally sent to Venezuela, they improved their treatment, but also inflicted a final assault.
They started beating them as soon as they got off the plane. “The police officer hit me in the face and mouth with a black baton and knocked out one of my front teeth,” Lewis said. Other officers also punched him in the ribs and hit him in the right knee with a stick. “After about a week in prison, a doctor examined me and told me I had torn a ligament (in my knee). They did nothing to fix my teeth,” he said, according to the report.
The investigation recorded sexual violence. One detainee said four guards sexually abused him while he was taken to an isolation cell known as an “island,” and regularly punished those deemed to have broken the rules with additional beatings, solitary confinement, and withholding food and water. “They were playing with sticks against my body,” Mario said. “They put a cane in my leg and rubbed it against my private parts.” He then forced one of the guards to perform oral sex on him, groped him and called him a “slut.” Another detainee, Nicholas, said he was sexually assaulted during the beating. The officers grabbed his genitals and made sexual comments to him. “They did this to several people,” he said. “I don’t think anyone else would say it because it’s so intimate and embarrassing.”
HRW notes that “beatings and other ill-treatment appear to be part of practices aimed at subduing, humiliating, and disciplining detainees by inflicting severe physical and mental pain.” Investigators warned that, according to testimony, the guards wore gray and black uniforms, always covered their faces and called each other nicknames such as: Satan, Tiger, Raven, Vegeta Either panther and They had full authority to treat prisoners the same way they treated them. “The brutality and repetitive nature of the abuse appears to indicate that the guards and riot police acted in the belief that their superiors supported or at least condoned their abusive behavior,” the report said.
frontier of three countries
According to HRW, Sekot does not comply with several sections of international human rights law and the so-called Mandela Rules, which guarantee the dignified treatment of prisoners. Opened in January 2023 by Naquib Bukele in the midst of an emergency regime, this facility has become a torture machine, part of the Salvadoran president’s organizational apparatus. The prison has a history of serious human rights violations. “Despite credible reports of torture and other ill-treatment in El Salvador’s prisons, the United States sent 252 Venezuelans to Secot, in violation of, among other things, the principle of non-refoulement set out in the Convention Against Torture,” the group said.
Almost all processes are irregular. The report charges that the U.S. and Salvadoran governments have refused to release information about the whereabouts and fate of the 252 people, whose actions, or lack of action, amount to the crime of enforced disappearance under international law. This crime occurs when the government detains a person and refuses to provide information about where they are or what will happen to them, leaving them without legal protection and causing further suffering to their families. HRW also denounced the detention of Venezuelan migrants in Secot, which has no legal basis and is arbitrary according to international humanitarian law.
Once Venezuelans were interned in Secot, they were unable to contact their families or lawyers. Neither San Salvador nor Washington ever published an official list of the names of those affected, nor did they verify the unofficial lists that were circulated. U.S. immigration authorities have promised members of the group that they will be returned to Venezuela. None of those interviewed were informed that their real destination was El Salvador.
For families, a special hell began, with the bureaucracy turned into a tool of mental torture, without knowing where their loved ones were. Immediately after the transfer, and apparently “earlier than normal ICE practice,” the names disappeared from the computer system containing the detainee’s location. Some of their American lawyers have accused immigration authorities of never informing them of their clients’ deportations.
When families were able to speak to someone at an ICE office or detention center to request information, the response from the agency was infuriating. Either your loved one’s name does not appear in the system, their whereabouts are unknown, or they are unable to provide information. In the best cases, it was confirmed that a relative had been deported, but it was not made clear where they had been sent. For some, the only solution was to contact the Venezuelan Embassy in the United States, which has been closed for years.
Attempts to contact Andrés Guzmán Caballero, El Salvador’s Presidential Human Rights Commissioner, by email only resulted in an automated message. His request was forwarded to the “competent authority”. After that, the administration was silent.
HWR emphasizes that El Salvador’s courts also refused to provide information on the whereabouts of Venezuelans. From March to July, Cristosar helped file 76 petitions. habeas corpus Even after submitting the matter to the Supreme Court, no response was received. At the end of March, the General Directorate of El Salvador’s Penal Center responded to the organization that the list of people affected by the measure had been kept confidential for seven years, which is why it could not report the names. It assured the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances that El Salvador did not detain Venezuelans, but “facilitated the use of its prison infrastructure for the detention of persons detained within the judicial and law enforcement systems of other countries, namely the United States.”
With their release, only part of their nightmare has passed. “I’m always on alert because every time I hear the sound of keys or handcuffs, it means they’re already coming to beat us,” Daniel told HRW. Detainees asserted that they were psychologically affected by their experiences. In Venezuela, they underwent medical examinations, interviews with official media, and background checks before returning home. They do not receive psychological support to cope with the subsequent trauma. According to the report, the two detainees said that an employee of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sevin) went to their homes after their return. “I live in fear,” said some of those interviewed. Deputies said the visit was “part of a surveillance process,” according to the report. They asked them to record videos of their detention and treatment in the U.S. and asked, among other things, whether they had ties to U.S. agencies seeking to “destabilize the government.”
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