MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It was like hell. That's how some of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador described their time at the maximum security prison there, a prison called CECOT. The men were flown to the Central American country as part of President Trump's mass deportation efforts. One of them, recently released in a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Venezuela, is Carlos Daniel Teran. NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán has his story.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: When the flight landed in El Salvador in March, 19-year-old Carlos Daniel Teran was forced to crouch with his head down while he walked from the airplane to the bus that was going to transport him to CECOT. The Venezuelan remembers the first thing a warden told him.
CARLOS DANIEL TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "The warden told us we were never going to leave this place," he says.
TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "I thought that it was going to be my last experience in life," he says. "I really thought I was never going to be free, that I was going to die there."
That mega prison, CECOT, was built in 2023 to hold Salvadoran men accused of terrorism. President Nayib Bukele uses the prison as part of his broad crackdown on people accused of being members of criminal gangs, including MS-13. When the complex was opened in 2023, El Salvador's justice minister said the only way out was, quote, "in a coffin." Human rights groups say that's mostly held true. They have decried what they say is a lack of due process, rampant abuse and other violations.
Teran is among more than 200 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration, many under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used wartime power. The White House paid El Salvador $6 million to house the Venezuelan men after accusing them of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua. The men were not allowed to communicate with their family members or attorneys for four months.
TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "I was really sad," Teran says. "I spent my birthday there, and it was really hard to not get a call from my family on that day or in the four months I was there." They barely left their cells the entire time, he says. The food was bad. The toilets in their cells regularly clogged. Teran says the worst part was how guards used violence against him and many others.
TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "Ten men were in the same cell," Teran says. About 40 to 50 guards would come in and stomp on them with their heavy boots and beat them with batons, he says, at the slightest provocation. Sometimes the prisoners were sent to a dark room in the prison called La Isla, The Island. One time he took a shower in the afternoon. That angered the guards. They sent him to La Isla, where he was held for two days without food. The prisoners protested the horrible treatment with hunger strikes and other actions.
TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "In response, the corrections officers started shooting at us with guns that fired rubber pellets," Teran says. Many prisoners were injured, he says, and were denied access to medical help. Teran still has bruises all over his body. A spokesperson for the government of El Salvador did not respond to a request for comment on Teran's allegations.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on any specific allegations of abuse or whether the U.S. would ask for an investigation. In an email to NPR, she called these, quote, "false sob stories," adding, once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend criminal, illegal gang members. Teran vehemently denies being a member of any gang. He also does not have a criminal record in the U.S. Now back in Venezuela, living with his aunt, Teran says he wants justice.
TERAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: That was hell, Teran says. No one else should be sent there.
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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