Immigrants Condemned by Trump to a 'Hell on Earth' Prison in El Salvador Describe the Torture Inflicted On Them There

Jul 28, 2025

The Trump administration branded immigrants who committed no crimes as “the worst of the worst” and deported them to a prison in El Salvador, where its strongman president, Nayib Bukele, insisted that they were being held on behalf of the U.S. Now these prisoners have been traded to Venezuela, and they are telling stories of their systematic abuse.

Here’s a report from NPR:

Andry Hernandez, one of the detainees who was also released just over a week ago, told NPR that guards routinely beat prisoners with batons in the hallway—or dragged them to a small, windowless cell known as "La Isla," or "The Island," where the abuse was even more brutal.
According to Hernandez, 32, the prisoners would be dragged out of their cells for complaining about their conditions, taking a bath outside designated hours, or even for making too much noise.
Hernandez, who is openly gay, said he was once taken by the guards to "La Isla" after guards noticed him bathing with a bucket outside designated hours.
He said that he was beaten by three guards wearing masks. And forced to perform oral sex on one of the guards. After a couple of hours, he was dragged back to his cell.
"CECOT was hell on Earth," Hernandez told NPR from Capacho, Venezuela, where he's now back with his family. …
Noah Bullock, the executive director of Cristosal, a Salvadoran human rights group said that the beatings and some of the other conditions described by the Venezuelan prisoners qualify as torture, and that by taking the Venezuelan prisoners to El Salvador, without notifying their lawyers, or their families, U.S. and Salvadorean authorities likely committed an act of forced disappearance.

The Trump administration fabricated criminal claims against these men and paid $6 million to the Salvadoran regime specifically to house them in a notoriously abusive prison. This is torture carried out at the behest of Donald Trump merely for the political theater of demonstrating cruelty toward immigrants.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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