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“The nightmare began the moment they took me off the plane.”
—Gonzalo Y., 26, from Zulia state, Venezuela, July 31, 2025
The United States deported Gonzalo and 251 other Venezuelans to El Salvador in March and April 2025. When the plane landed, agents forced him and the others to kneel with their heads down, he recounted. He told one of the agents that he had a spinal condition and could not keep his head lowered, but the agent struck him on the back of the neck with a baton. On the bus transporting them to the maximum-security prison known as the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), guards beat him again, he said.
“When we arrived at the entrance to CECOT, the guards made us kneel so they could shave our heads,” said Gonzalo. “One of the officers hit me in the legs with a baton and I fell to my knees on the ground.”
Everyone received the same treatment, he said. “The prison director told us: ‘You have arrived in hell.'” Inside CECOT, guards and riot police constantly beat and mistreated the Venezuelans. “The guards hit me many times — in the hallway of the module and in the punishment cell,” said Gonzalo. “They beat us almost every day.”
The Venezuelans remained incommunicado at CECOT for approximately four months, until July 18, when they were transferred to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange between El Salvador and Venezuela.
This joint report by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal presents the most comprehensive investigation published to date on the treatment these individuals endured during their detention in El Salvador, and includes the first detailed account of how detainees are treated inside CECOT. We interviewed 40 people who were held at CECOT and approximately 150 others with reliable knowledge of the experiences of Venezuelans detained there, including family members and attorneys. We reviewed a wide range of documents, including photographs of injuries, criminal records, and court documents from 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 individuals of being “terrorists” affiliated with 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 records found that many had not been convicted of any offense by federal or state authorities in the United States, nor in Venezuela or other Latin American countries where they had lived.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal concluded that the 252 Venezuelans were subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law.
Gonzalo’s mother said her son called her on March 13 from a U.S. immigration detention center to tell her he was going to be deported to Venezuela, where “he would finally be able to give me the hug he owed me for my birthday.”
“I held onto that promise, but he never came,” his mother said. As days passed without news, she described feeling “unbearable pain.” The family called several detention centers, but U.S. authorities refused to provide information about his whereabouts — only that Gonzalo had been removed from the United States.
About a week later, a friend told Gonzalo’s mother that he had found her son’s name on a list published by a news outlet naming the Venezuelans who had been sent to CECOT. She searched for videos and photos of the deported men, hoping to recognize him, but could not find him.
“From that moment on, everything went dark,” she said. “All I felt was anguish, pain, rage, and despair.”
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal concluded that detainees at CECOT were subjected to inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged incommunicado detention, inadequate food, denial of basic hygiene and sanitation, limited access to medical care and medication, and the absence of recreational or educational activities — in violation of multiple 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 abuse, including cases of sexual violence. Many of these abuses constitute torture under international human rights law.
CECOT detainees said the beatings began the moment they arrived in El Salvador and continued for nearly the entire duration of their detention. Guards and riot police beat them in the hallways of the prison module and in an isolation cell in a section of CECOT known as “the Island.” They were beaten during daily cell searches for alleged rule violations — such as speaking loudly with other detainees or showering at the wrong time — and sometimes for requesting medical attention.
Detainees said they were beaten following the visit of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in March, following visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in May and June, and following two prison protests that took place in April and May.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal concluded that the torture and mistreatment of Venezuelans at CECOT were not isolated incidents committed by a handful of abusive guards or riot police officers, but systematic violations that recurred throughout their detention. Every former detainee interviewed reported being subjected to serious physical and psychological abuse on an almost daily basis for the entire duration of their imprisonment.
These beatings and other abuses appear to be part of a practice designed to subdue, humiliate, and discipline detainees through the infliction of extreme physical and psychological suffering. Agents also appear to have acted with the conviction that their superiors supported or tolerated their abusive conduct.
Daniel B., for example, described being beaten by agents after he was interviewed by ICRC 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 one blow made his nose bleed. “They kept hitting me in the stomach and, when I tried to catch my breath, I started choking on the blood. My cellmates were screaming for help, saying they were killing us, but the officers said they just wanted to make us suffer,” he said.
Three detainees at CECOT told Human Rights Watch and Cristosal that they were victims of sexual violence. One said that guards took him to “the Island,” where they beat him, and that four guards then sexually abused him and forced him to perform oral sex on one of them. “They played with their batons on my body.” Detainees said the sexual abuse affected more people, but that victims were unlikely to speak about what they had suffered due to stigma.
The human rights violations documented in this report contradict El Salvador’s obligations under international law, including prohibitions on arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture and other ill-treatment. U.S. authorities repeatedly denied family members of individuals sent to CECOT any information about their whereabouts, making the U.S. government complicit in their enforced disappearances. The U.S. government also violated its legal obligations to uphold the principle of non-refoulement by transferring Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador despite readily foreseeable risks of torture and mistreatment.
Many people who were held at CECOT said they continue to suffer lasting physical injuries and psychological trauma. “I am on alert all the time, because every time I heard the sound of keys and handcuffs, it meant they were coming to beat us,” said one of them.
The Venezuelans detained at CECOT were returned to their country of origin. Venezuela is experiencing a humanitarian crisis and systematic human rights violations under the government of Nicolás Maduro that have forced nearly 8 million people to flee. Some of those detained at 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. In some cases, moreover, members of Venezuelan intelligence services have appeared at the homes of individuals who were held at CECOT and compelled them to record videos about their treatment in the United States.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal call on the U.S. government to end all transfers 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 intensify their public scrutiny of human rights violations committed by the U.S. government against migrants, as well as the widespread human rights violations committed in El Salvador against detainees.
“We are not terrorists — we were migrants,” said one of the CECOT detainees. “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.”
