In a deeply troubling three-country arrangement, 252 Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. were rounded up and shipped to a notoriously inhumane prison in El Salvador, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended the move, stating President Donald Trump’s administration was “grateful for [their] partnership with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to help remove the worst of the worst violent criminal illegal aliens from American communities.”
However, the government’s own records — reviewed by outlets including the Texas Tribune and ProPublica — tell a drastically different story. Only 3% of migrants deported had been convicted of violent offenses and over 82% had no criminal record in the U.S., Venezuela or any Latin American country. So, they are not the “worst of the worst” — just individuals seeking safety, opportunity and the American dream.
One Venezuelan man, a children’s soccer coach unable to earn enough in his home country, attempted to immigrate under former President Joe Biden’s administration’s CBP One program, a mobile application. At his appointment, officials flagged his tattoos, isolated him for months and eventually sent him to El Salvador. In response, the Department of Homeland Security insisted that these migrants were members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs from Venezuela, stating the groups are “some of the most violent and ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth” that “rape, maim and murder for sport.” To identify individuals as dangerous based solely on a tattoo — whether the DHS admits it or not — is bigoted and a frightening intrusion upon residential rights and fundamental human rights that every detainee is owed.
According to the Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, 252 American dreamers were subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law. The public’s silence regarding the U.S.’ continuous breach of global law, harming thousands of innocent lives, speaks volumes to citizens’ complacency toward an increasingly fascist society.
Upon arrival at their designated prison, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, a prison official told the migrants, “You have arrived in hell.” He was not exaggerating.
Reports of starvation, beatings, torture and cells tightly packed with hundreds of detainees are routine. El Salvadorian prisons, with an official capacity for 70,000 people, now hold more than 109,000. It was reported that 3,300 children have been arrested, with over 66 cases of children subjected to torture, and 350 prisoners have died. Several reported suicidal thoughts; at least one attempted suicide.
Prison officials allegedly told the men that “nobody knew they were here,” that they “would never get out alive” and that “their families had abandoned them.” As ProPublica reporter Melissa Sanchez reported, “The men I’ve spoken to can’t sleep. They close their eyes and remember being beat constantly.” Frequent reports from detainees, relatives and lawyers continue to reveal the abuse within the Salvadorian prison system, including incessant beating, verbal degradation and in some cases, sexual abuse.
These migrants’ crimes were not violent. In fact, it was seeking a better life in the supposed pillar of the free world. Their lives were upended because they sought to survive — because U.S. policy made the act of survival an offense punishable by death.
When America outsources cruelty, it drenches its hands in blood. The nation must hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountable for its deplorable actions and its escalated abuses of power. If tattoos now provoke incarceration, a paper-thin line exists between the law and blind prejudice. Morality cannot and should not cease at a nation’s border.
