Venezuelan migrants repatriated from CECOT report physical ill-treatment and psychological torture, including humiliation for their nationality and migrant status, while in detention. The transfer was carried out after intense diplomatic negotiations by Venezuela, and 252 citizens were rescued.

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“We were mentally tortured, we slept in a can,” said one of the migrants. Another, showing wounds in front of teleSUR cameras, pointed to his face and exclaimed: “Look, I was shot here,” one of the migrants told the media.

“When we arrived there on March 16, the first person who received us was the director saying ‘this is hell’,” he recalled. “If we bathed, they would leave us in the hole again and beat us.

Many other colleagues were shot for wanting to have a communication from the outside that was never given them,” explained Angel, 20 years old, who when getting off the plane said to the microphones of Venezuelan television that his stay “It was a hell”.

The Venezuelan authorities confirmed that the returnees reported torture and poor prison conditions. A high percentage of returnees have no criminal record, and among those who do, the majority are for minor offences. Some migrants claim that they did not enter the US, but surrendered to the authorities at the border and were imprisoned and deported.

Researcher Franco Vielma reports that 75 per cent of the 252 returnees have no criminal record, and most of the remaining 25 per cent committed minor offences. In addition, six people are reported to have committed serious crimes in Venezuela but were not prosecuted in the US. Some migrants claim that they did not enter the US, but were imprisoned and deported to El Salvador after surrendering at the border.

On the other hand, Diosdado Cabello, The Sectoral Vice President of Politics, Citizen Security, and Peace of Venezuela, displayed cartridges of pellets while receiving repatriates at the Simón Bolívar International Airport:

“Let the world know, this that I have in my hands is proof of what a rat Nayib Bukele is. This is how he dismissed the young Venezuelans: as they were getting off the buses, as they were boarding the plane, they were shot with several pellets. Several are coming back injured,” he denounced.

Cabello added: “Many were left with marks on their backs, split eyebrows, dislocated shoulders, and untreated infections. A barbaric act!”

In addition, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced that Venezuelan migrants repatriated from El Salvador were tortured in “concentration camps,” revealing that one of them lost a kidney due to beatings.

Maduro warned Bukele that there will be justice for these acts. The rescue of these 252 migrants highlights the struggle for human rights of Venezuelans abroad and generates demands for international responses.

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