Treatment of Venezuelan migrants held at Salvadoran prison at U.S. request amounted to “arbitrary detention” and “torture,” report argues

A report released Wednesday by human rights groups determined that the deportation and treatment of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants imprisoned in El Salvador for months at the request of the U.S. amounted to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international law.

The investigation, by the groups Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, found the detainees were victims of “constant beatings” by Salvadoran guards at the notorious CECOT maximum security prison, as well as other forms of mistreatment, including cases of sexual abuse. Investigators argued some of these alleged abuses constitute torture under international law.

“The human rights violations documented in this report violate El Salvador’s obligations under international law, including the prohibitions on arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture and other ill-treatment,” the report said.

Citing dozens of interviews, including with 40 of the Venezuelan men held at the mega prison, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal said the detainees also faced “inhumane” conditions, incommunicado detention, inadequate access to food, limited medical care and the denial of basic hygiene, inconsistent with United Nations rules governing the treatment of prisoners.

“These beatings and other abuses appear to be part of a practice designed to subjugate, humiliate, and discipline detainees through the imposition of grave physical and physiological suffering,” the report says. “Officers also appear to have acted on the belief that their superiors either supported or tolerated their abusive acts.”

The human rights groups argued the U.S. government was “complicit” in the mistreatment they found, noting the Trump administration gave El Salvador $4.7 million in March, including to imprison deportees accused of having ties to Tren de Aragua, a gang that originated in Venezuela.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson did not address the allegations in Wednesday’s report, but said, “President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people by removing dangerous criminal and terrorist illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American public.”

“CBS should spend their time and energy amplifying the stories of Angel Parents, whose innocent American children have tragically been murdered by vicious illegal aliens that President Trump is removing from the country,” Jackson added in a statement. 

The Venezuelan men at the center of the investigation were released from CECOT this summer and returned to Venezuela as part of a U.S.-brokered prisoner swap. Most of them were deported to El Salvador in mid-March by the U.S. government after the Trump administration accused them of being dangerous criminals and members of Tren de Aragua. Many were deported from the U.S. with little to no due process under the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

CBS News was first to obtain and publish the list of the Venezuelan men sent to CECOT in March. Using that list, “60 Minutes” and CBS News found that many of the deportees did not have any apparent criminal record, in the U.S. or abroad, despite the administration’s allegations.

The human rights groups made similar findings in their report, saying their “review of criminal record background documents indicates that many of them had not been convicted of any crimes by federal or state authorities in the United States, nor in Venezuela or other Latin American countries where they had lived.”