No One Was Supposed to Leave Alive
Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching. 'Hit the piñata,' she cheered.
When the government of El Salvador opened the prison complex known as CECOT in 2023, the country's security minister said the inmates would only be able to get out ' inside a coffin.' This promise has largely been kept. The Salvadoran human-rights organization Cristosal has documented cases of prisoners being transported out of the jail for urgent medical care, but these inmates died soon after, before anyone could ask them what it was like inside the prison.
What little is known about life in CECOT (the Spanish acronym for Terrorism Confinement Center) comes from the media tours staged by President Nayib Bukele, which show men crammed into cells with bare-metal bunkbeds stacked to the ceiling like human shelving. In most of the videos posted online, the men—some with the facial tattoos of the country's gangs—stand in silence. The Salvadoran government has encouraged CECOT's terrifying reputation, turning the prison into a museum where Bukele's tough-on-gangs tactics can be exhibited for the press. But media visits are also strictly controlled. Interviews with prisoners are rare and tightly supervised.
On Friday, for the first time, a group of prisoners walked out of CECOT's gates as free men. They were 252 of the Venezuelans that the Trump administration had deported to El Salvador in March when it alleged—while offering little to no evidence—that they were gang members. This month, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro negotiated a prisoner swap with the United States, releasing 10 American citizens in his custody and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners. In return, the Venezuelans in El Salvador were put on a plane and sent to Caracas. They brought with them detailed accounts of beatings and harsh treatment. (The government of El Salvador did not respond to a request for comment about their claims.)
Four former prisoners told me they were punched, kicked, and struck with clubs. They were cut off from contact with their families, deprived of legal help, and taunted by guards. All recalled days spent in a punishment cell known as 'the island,' a dark room with no water where they slept on the floor. Those days, the only light they could see came from a dim lightbulb in the ceiling that illuminated a cross.
I talked with Keider Alexander Flores over the phone yesterday, just a few hours after Venezuelan police officers dropped him off at his mother's house in Caracas.
Flores told me that he and his brother left Venezuela in 2023, trekking through the jungles of Panama's Darién Gap and riding buses all the way to Mexico. They applied for an appointment to cross into the United States legally and arrived in Texas in August. Flores soon settled in Dallas and started an asylum application, but he didn't complete the process. He found work laying carpet. His real passion was music: He DJed under the name Keyder Flower. In one of his Instagram posts, he flexes his teenage muscles as he plays tracks by a pool.
From the September 2024 issue: Seventy miles in hell
In December, after a DJ gig at a house party in Dallas, Flores was riding in the passenger seat of a friend's car when they were pulled over. Flores told me they had smoked marijuana, and the police took them to the station. Later he was sent to ICE detention. At an immigration hearing, the judge told him that he wouldn't be able to return to the United States for 10 years, because he had broken U.S. law. When asked what country he wanted to be deported to, Flores said Venezuela.
While in ICE detention, Flores learned that he had been flagged as 'an active member' of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Federal agents showed up to interview him, he said. They had seen his pictures on Instagram and said his hand signals looked suspicious. 'I was doing a cool sign, but they said it was a gesture of Tren de Aragua,' Flores told me. Flores knew about CECOT. He had seen videos at the ICE detention center in Texas, where the TV sometimes showed cable news. In mid-March, he called his brother from detention to say that he was about to get deported to Venezuela; two days later, he was put on a plane. ICE guards didn't let the passengers open the window shades during the flight. Flores and his fellow detainees found out they were in El Salvador only after they had landed.
Another newly released Venezuelan prisoner I spoke with, Juan José Ramos, told me he'd entered the United States legally, with an appointment for an asylum hearing, and had barely settled down in Utah when ICE agents stopped his car on the way to Walmart, arresting him with no explanation. He said that when the men arrived at CECOT, they saw inmates wearing white T-shirts and shorts, heads completely shaved. Ramos asked a Salvadoran guard who these men were and why they were crying. The guard replied: 'That's you. All of you will end up like that. We will treat you all the same.'
Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with shared similar accounts of what happened next. The Venezuelans were taken to a wing of CECOT known as Module 8, with 32 cells, and didn't interact with the rest of the prisoners. The inmates communicated with one another via hand signals, because when they spoke, they were beaten. They slept on metal bunks, often without mattresses. Soap and juice bottles were luxuries afforded prior to visits by representatives of the Red Cross, who came twice during their four-month stay. Sometimes, the guards gave the prisoners better meals than usual, took pictures with their phones, then took the food away, Ramos, Flores, and others told me.
A riot broke out in April, after guards beat one of the inmates to the point that he started convulsing, Flores told me. The incident convinced the Venezuelans that they had to do something. 'If your friend was being beaten, would you leave him alone as they beat him?' Flores asked me.
Adam Serwer: Trump's Salvadoran Gulag
Seven of the Venezuelans arrived days after the rest, deported from Guantánamo, where a hunger strike had broken out. They suggested doing the same at CECOT. Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with said every inmate they knew joined the hunger strike, which lasted for several days. Some took their protest further by cutting themselves on the corners of their metal bunks. They called that a huelga de sangre: 'blood strike.'
Three or four days after the strike started, two prison directors came to negotiate. The inmates agreed to end the strike in exchange for an assurance that the beatings would stop. 'They let us live for a while,' Flores told me. But in mid-May, when a few inmates refused to have their cells inspected, the guards beat them. That's when a second riot broke out. The guards responded by shooting the inmates with pellets. Then came the six days of beatings.
Martínez, 26, told me he was pulled over while driving in El Paso, Texas, in February because his license plate had expired. The officer was ready to let him go with a warning, but asked Martínez to remove his shirt. Martínez had tattoos of Bible verses and the name of his wife. The officer called ICE.
Martínez, who fell ill after the hunger strike, had to be taken to a clinic, where a nurse told him he had suffered serious liver damage. After the beatings, Martínez told me, some inmates vomited blood, and others couldn't walk for days. 'If they're going to kill us, I hope they kill us soon,' he said he told himself.
The guards told him he would spend the rest of his life in CECOT. Until early Friday morning, when Martínez was sent home as abruptly as he'd arrived, he had believed them.
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Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Judges are scrutinizing the latest mismatch between White House deportation rhetoric and DOJ's position in court
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Chicago Tribune
3 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Dehumanizing': Inside the Broadview ICE facility where immigrants sleep on cold concrete
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It has no beds, let alone any covers, Chavez said. They were not offered showers or hot food. No toothbrushes or feminine products. And certainly, Chavez recalled, those detained had no answers from immigration authorities about what would happen next. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that immigration detainees such as Chavez have been held for days at the processing center, a two-story building that is designed as a temporary way station until detainees can be transferred to jails out of state. For busier periods in June, data shows the typical detainee was held two or three days — far longer than the five or so hours typical in years past. The findings, which come from a Tribune analysis of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained and shared by the research group Deportation Data Project, show that the federal agency has routinely violated ICE's internal guidelines, which say the facility shouldn't hold people for more than 12 hours. Chavez became one of hundreds of people held in the facility for longer than 12 hours under the latest crackdown. Data showed that at least three people spent six or more days there. 'There were nearly 30 other women there in a single big room. Most were mothers who couldn't stop crying. The group of men were in a separate room,' Chavez said in Spanish, speaking to the Tribune in a Zoom interview from Honduras. In the group, she said, she met women who were nursing, pregnant women and elderly women. 'I never want any of my children, or any other person to go through this. It's dehumanizing, they treat us worse than criminals,' Chavez said. ICE, for its part, declined to respond to questions about the Tribune's findings and has not released its own data calculating how often it has held people in Broadview. But on the agency's website, it says it employs 'a robust, multilevel oversight and compliance program' to ensure each facility follows a 'strict set of detention standards.' A spokesperson for ICE reportedly told ABC 7 that: 'Any accusations that detainees are treated inhumanely in any way are categorically false. … There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Broadview office longer than the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, detainees in such situations are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.' Few can get inside to see what's going on, frustrating immigrant rights advocates and their allies in Congress. In mid-June, as the facility was cycling through detainees such as Chavez, four Democratic members of Congress were denied entry into the Broadview facility during an unannounced visit. On Wednesday, a dozen Democratic members of Congress who have been blocked from making oversight visits at immigration detention centers filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump's administration that seeks to ensure they are granted entry into the facilities, including Broadview, even without prior notice. In Illinois, immigrant rights advocates are urging Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to investigate the Broadview facility's ownership structure and contractual agreements with federal immigration authorities. They're also calling for a full site inspection and for the state to use all available legal tools to shut the facility down. State and local officials, however, say there's little they can do to force the U.S. government to change how it operates a federal facility. The longer detention times in Broadview have come as the Trump administration has pushed a massive boost in arrests while scrambling to build out the infrastructure to handle them, creating logistical logjams that can be particularly felt in Illinois, which has forbid local jails from holding ICE detainees. That means anyone arrested in the Chicago area must be sent out of state, once they're processed by ICE. So, for now, that can mean a small processing facility in the western suburbs — one that rarely held anyone overnight during the final years of President Joe Biden's administration — can end up warehousing dozens of detainees as they await ICE to move them. State Sen. Omar Aquino, a Chicago Democrat, was the primary sponsor of the Illinois Way Forward Act, which also limited local jails from contracting with ICE. He did not respond to questions regarding the unintentional hardships detainees are now facing because of the law. Instead, he said he 'stand(s) by the progress we have made in solidifying Illinois as a welcoming state, where immigrant families can live without fear and raise their children in a safe and supportive environment.' Chavez, who had been an immigration advocate in Chicago for nearly a decade, was deported on July 13 back to her native Honduras after spending more than a month in different ICE facilities in Illinois and Kentucky. She said she still feels traumatized by a system that separated her from her children and grandchildren while causing emotional and physical pain. Her ankles are still swollen from being shackled as she moved from one facility to another flown back to Honduras. 'I'm trying to heal both emotionally and physically,' she said. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, described the Broadview facility as a '12-hour hold facility with the typical stay of approximately five hours,' with a DHS auditor noting that 'absent exceptional circumstances, no detainee should be housed in a holding facility for longer than 12 hours.' When the members of Congress attempted to visit the site in June, Rep. Delia Ramirez noted, in a speech on the House floor, that ICE had posted a sign saying that the agency only 'processes' arrestees there and 'does not house aliens at these locations.' Yet, ICE's own data would suggest otherwise. The Tribune examined an ICE dataset, provided through the Deportation Data Project, that recorded dates and times of everyone detained at an ICE facility across the country, from September 2023 through June 26. The data had limitations. ICE recorded a time, down to the minute, when each person was checked in and out, but the Tribune found that the logs sometimes recorded people leaving Broadview only a minute or two before entering another facility hundreds of miles away, suggesting ICE may not have properly logged when someone left. To adjust for that, the Tribune computed earlier times people may have left Broadview, based on reasonable travel times from Broadview to the next ICE facilities — calculated through online mapping software and more plausible entries by ICE for others sent the same places. Even adjusting down the length of potential stays in Broadview, the analysis found a clear jump in how long detainees were held there, particularly earlier this summer. The median time logged for someone — meaning that half had shorter stays and half had longer — jumped beyond 12 hours for people booked into Broadview by mid-June. 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They joined another 23 who had been shipped that day to Broadview from facilities in Wisconsin and Indiana that house ICE detainees, as ICE shuffled detainees across the country. That made it the busiest day for bookings in Broadview through late June, as ICE ramped up enforcement in the Chicago area, and fueled the long stays in a place where advocates and family members of the detained say people have been held without basic necessities or medical care. In the federal government's 2023 audit of the facility, it confirmed the facility has six holding cells — two large ones, two smaller ones and two single-occupancy — with the four largest cells each having a toilet for detainees to share, as well as 'a place to sit while awaiting processing.' The audit said the facility lacked a medical unit, medical staff, food facilities or food staff. 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'I know it is not easy to be in there.' Their older son, a 13-year-old, whose name the Tribune is withholding at the family's request, said he worries constantly about his mother, especially after learning about the complaints of conditions at facilities such as Broadview. 'There are nights when I can't sleep thinking about my mom,' the teen said. 'I wonder if she's sleeping, or if she even got to eat.' Immigrant rights advocates complain that such conditions not only violate detainees' human rights, but also ICE's own policies. 'It's overflowed. They're not able to take people out within the times they are supposed to,' said Brandon Lee, with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In July, advocates outlined their concerns about the Broadview facility's violations of state law in a letter to Raoul and Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke, asking for their support. But both elected officials said that they do not possess direct investigating authority over ICE. Raoul added that only Congress could step in, while noting that reports of conditions at Broadview, 'while disturbing, are consistent with the deplorable conditions we have seen at federal ICE facilities around the nation.' Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, agreed that state law cannot force changes at federally operated facilities like Broadview. He said the group is pushing Congress for more oversight of ICE operations, which the Republican-controlled body infused with a significant boost in cash to ramp up immigration enforcement, including building new detention centers. Some advocates want Broadview shut down altogether. 'The 'facilities' also use torture-based tactics to create an even more hostile environment inside for immigrants — from lights on all the time that don't let them sleep, lack of medical care, lack of mental health support from officers — to the point that individuals detained had to create networks of emotional support,' said Antonio Gutierrez, co-founder and current Strategic Coordinator for Organized Communities Against Deportations. Without oversight, federal agencies may get away with violating their own rules and with that the rights of immigrants, said Ramirez, who represents Illinois' 3rd Congressional District. In a speech on the House floor June 25, Ramirez noted the irony that ICE insisted the Broadview facility was a processing center, and not a detention center, so it didn't have to allow members of Congress inside. 'Let me be very clear. Just because something isn't named a detention facility doesn't mean this administration isn't going to use it as one,' she said at the time. 'If people are detained there, it is a detention facility, period.' For now, the families of detained loved ones endure — whether it is Chavez back in Honduras, thousands of miles away from her three children, or Lopez, who is only a couple of hundred of miles away from her three children, but still unable to see them. Even if Lopez's husband wanted to take the children to see their mother in detention, the trip would be too difficult, he said. The family lives in north suburban Lake County and Lopez is in Kentucky. Chavez said she is still trying to comprehend how she ended up detained, sleeping on the cold floor in Broadview, shackled and deprived of basic necessities. 'We prayed. Sometimes we braided each other's hair. We cried,' recalling her detention in Broadview and Kentucky, Chavez said. Her lawyer said they will continue to appeal her asylum case from Honduras.
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
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When Friday's monthly jobs report turned out to be decidedly bleak, Trump ignored the warnings in the data and fired the head of the agency that produces the report. 'Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes,' Trump said on his social media platform, without offering evidence for his claim. 'The Economy is BOOMING.' It's possible that the disappointing numbers are growing pains from the rapid transformation caused by Trump and that stronger growth will return — or they may be a preview of even more disruption to come. Trump's aggressive use of tariffs, executive actions, spending cuts and tax code changes carry significant political risk if he is unable to deliver middle-class prosperity. The effects of his new tariffs are still several months away from rippling through the economy, right as many Trump allies in Congress will be campaigning in the midterm elections. 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'For the White House and their allies, a key part of managing the expectations and politics of the Trump economy is maintaining vigilance when it comes to public perceptions,' said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. Just 38% of adults approve of Trump's handling of the economy, according to a July poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That's down from the end of Trump's first term when half of adults approved of his economic leadership. The White House paints a rosier image, casting the economy as emerging from a period of uncertainty after Trump's restructuring and repeating the economic gains seen in his first term before the pandemic struck. 'President Trump is implementing the very same policy mix of deregulation, fairer trade, and pro-growth tax cuts at an even bigger scale — as these policies take effect, the best is yet to come,' White House spokesman Kush Desai said. The economic numbers over the last week show the difficulties that Trump might face if the numbers continue on their current path: — Friday's jobs report showed that U.S. employers have shed 37,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump's tariff launch in April, undermining prior White House claims of a factory revival. — Net hiring has plummeted over the last three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May — a combined 258,000 jobs lower than previously indicated. On average last year, the economy added 168,000 jobs a month. — A Thursday inflation report showed that prices have risen 2.6% over the year that ended in June, an increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.2% in April. Prices of heavily imported items, such as appliances, furniture and toys and games, jumped from May to June. — On Wednesday, a report on gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the U.S. economy — showed that it grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3% during the first half of the year, down sharply from 2.8% growth last year. 'The economy's just kind of slogging forward,' said Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies employment trends. 'Yes, the unemployment rate's not going up, but we're adding very few jobs. The economy's been growing very slowly. It just looks like a 'meh' economy is continuing.' Trump has sought to pin the blame for any economic troubles on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates — even though doing so could generate more inflation. Trump has publicly backed two Fed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, for voting for rate cuts at Wednesday's meeting. But their logic is not what the president wants to hear: They were worried, in part, about a slowing job market. But this is a major economic gamble being undertaken by Trump and those pushing for lower rates under the belief that mortgages will also become more affordable as a result and boost homebuying activity. His tariff policy has changed repeatedly over the last six months, with the latest import tax numbers serving as a substitute for what the president announced in April, which provoked a stock market sell-off. It might not be a simple one-time adjustment as some Fed board members and Trump administration officials argue. Of course, Trump can't say no one warned him about the possible consequences of his economic policies. Biden, then the outgoing president, did just that in a speech in December at the Brookings Institution, saying the cost of the tariffs would eventually hit American workers and businesses. 'He seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought into this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs rather than the American consumer,' Biden said. 'I believe this approach is a major mistake.' Boak and Rugber write for the Associated Press.
