NPR reports:

Carlos Daniel Terán, 19, still remembers the words a prison warden told him when he entered El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT.

“He told us we were never going to leave this place,” Terán recalled.

It was March of this year. Terán had just been transferred from an immigration detention center in Texas to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — known as CECOT — a maximum-security prison built to house accused Salvadoran gang members. El Salvador’s own justice minister once said the only way out of the prison was “inside a coffin.”

Terán was among hundreds of Venezuelans sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration, many under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a rarely-used wartime power. They were accused — without evidence — of being members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. For nearly four months, the U.S. government withheld the identities of the men it deported and barred them from contacting their families or lawyers.

Then just over a week ago, Terán was suddenly a free man — released alongside more than 250 other Venezuelan detainees as part of a prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela.

“I thought this was going to be the last experience of my life,” Terán told NPR from Caracas. “I thought I was going to die there.”

Since their release, NPR has spoken with Terán and two other former detainees about their time at CECOT. They described being subjected to violence — and, in some cases, sexual abuse — by prison guards, denied adequate food, and forced to endure inhumane conditions. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

A Venezuelan migrant took the first step on Thursday toward suing the United States for what he says was his wrongful detention and removal to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, 27, spent four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where he said he was beaten and abused. He filed an administrative claim on Thursday with the Homeland Security Department, accusing U.S. immigration agencies of removing him without due process.

It is the first such claim to be filed by one of the 252 Venezuelan men who were expelled and sent to El Salvador in March, his lawyers said, and is a necessary step before taking legal action against the U.S. government in federal court.

Mr. Rengel, who is seeking $1.3 million in damages, was released last week as part of a large-scale prisoner swap between Venezuela and the United States. He is now living in Venezuela.

“I want to clear my name,” he said in a phone interview late Wednesday from his home in the state of Miranda. “I am not a bad person.” [Continue reading…]