The United States removed Gonzalo and 251 other Venezuelans to El Salvador in March and April 2025. When the plane landed, officers forced him and others to kneel with their heads down, he said. He told one of them that he had a spine problem and could not keep his head low, but one officer struck him with a baton in the back of the neck. On a bus to the maximum-security prison known as the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT), guards beat him again, he said.
“When we arrived at the entrance of CECOT, guards made us kneel so they could shave our heads,” Gonzalo said. “One of the officers hit me on the legs with a baton, and I fell to the ground on my knees.”
Everyone, he said, was subjected to the same treatment. “The prison director told us, ‘You have arrived in hell’. In CECOT, guards and riot police beat and abused the Venezuelans constantly. “The guards beat me many times, in the hallways of the prison module and in the punishment cell,” Gonzalo said. “They beat us almost every day.”
The Venezuelans were held incommunicado in the CECOT maximum-security prison for approximately four months, until July 18, when they were sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange between El Salvador and Venezuela.
This joint report by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal provides the most comprehensive account to date of the treatment these people endured during detention in El Salvador and includes the first detailed account of the treatment of detainees in CECOT. We interviewed 40 people who had been held in CECOT and another 150 people with credible knowledge of the experiences of the Venezuelans detained there, including relatives and lawyers. We reviewed a wide range of documents, including photographs of injuries, criminal records, and judicial documents in El Salvador and the United States, and also consulted international forensic experts.
The governments of the United States and El Salvador accused most of these people of being “terrorists,” part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan organized crime group that the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. However, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal’s 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 America countries where they had lived.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal found that the 252 Venezuelans were subjected to what amounts to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law.
Gonzalo’s mother said her son called her on March 13, from immigration detention in the United States, to tell her he was going to be deported to Venezuela, where he would “give her the birthday hug he owed her.”
“I held on to that promise—but he did not arrive,” his mother said. As the days passed without information, she felt “unbearable pain.” The family called multiple detention centers, but US authorities denied information on his whereabouts. They only said he had been removed from the United States.
About a week later, a friend told Gonzalo’s mother that he had found Gonzalo’s name on a list published by a media outlet, naming the Venezuelans who had been sent to CECOT. She searched videos and photos of the deported men, hoping to recognize him, but she didn’t find him. “From that moment, everything went dark,” she said, “All I felt was anguish, pain, anger, and despair.”
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal found that the people held in CECOT were subjected to inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged incommunicado detention, inadequate food, denial of basic hygiene and sanitation, limited access to health care and medicine, and lack of recreational or educational activities, in violation of several provisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the “Mandela Rules.”
We also documented that detainees were subjected to constant beatings and other forms of ill-treatment, including some cases of sexual violence. Many of these abuses constitute torture under international human rights law.
People held in CECOT said they were beaten from the moment they arrived in El Salvador and throughout their time in detention. Guards and riot police beat them in the hallways of the prison module and in a solitary confinement cell in a section of CECOT known as “the Island.” They beat them during daily cell searches for allegedly violating prison rules, such as speaking loudly with other detainees or showering at the wrong time, and sometimes for requesting medical treatment.
People held in CECOT said that many detainees were also beaten after US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s visit in March, following visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in May and June, and after two prison protests occurring in April and May.
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 that took place repeatedly during their detention. Every former detainee interviewed reported being subjected to serious physical and psychological abuse on a near-daily basis, throughout their entire time in detention.
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 psychological suffering. Officers also appear to have acted on the belief that their superiors either supported or tolerated their abusive acts.
Daniel B., for instance, described how officers beat him after he spoke with ICRC staff members during their visit to CECOT in May. He said guards took him to “the Island,” where they beat him with a baton. He said a blow made his nose bleed. “They kept hitting me, in the stomach, and when I tried to breathe, I started to choke on the blood. My cellmates shouted for help, saying they were killing us, but the officers said they just wanted to make us suffer,” he said.
Three people held in CECOT told Human Rights Watch and Cristosal that they were subjected to sexual violence. One of them said that guards took him to “the Island,” where they beat him. He 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.” People held in CECOT said sexual abuse affected more people, but victims were unlikely to speak about what they had suffered due to stigma.
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. US officials repeatedly denied relatives of people sent to CECOT information on their whereabouts, making the US government complicit in their enforced disappearances. The US government also violated its legal obligations to respect the principle of non-refoulement by transferring Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador despite easily foreseeable risks of torture and ill-treatment.
Many people who were held in CECOT said they continue to suffer lasting physical injuries and psychological trauma. “I’m on alert all the time because every time I heard the sound of keys and handcuffs, it meant they were coming to beat us,” one of them said.
The Venezuelans who were detained in CECOT have since been returned to their home country. Venezuela suffers a humanitarian crisis and systematic human rights violations carried out by the administration of Nicolás Maduro, which have compelled nearly 8 million people to flee. Some of the people held in CECOT had fled abuses by the Maduro government and its security forces and face the risk of persecution in Venezuela. Their repatriation to Venezuela violates the principle of non-refoulement. Additionally, in some cases, members of the Venezuelan intelligence services have appeared at the homes of people who were held in CECOT and forced them to record videos regarding their treatment in the United States.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal call on the US government to end all transfer of third-country nationals to El Salvador. We also urge foreign governments and international human rights bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, to substantially step up their public scrutiny of the US government’s human rights violations against migrants as well as El Salvador’s widespread human rights violations against detainees.
“We are not terrorists, we were migrants,” one of the people held in CECOT said. “We went to the United States to seek protection and the chance at a better future, but we ended up in a prison in a country we didn’t even know, treated worse than animals.”