By Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Melissa Sanchez and Mica Rosenberg, ProPublica, Ronna Rísquez, Alianza Rebelde Investiga, and Adrián González, Cazadores de Fake News
Now That They’ re
FREE …
Now that he’ s free, Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, wants the world to know that he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison. He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn’ t kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs.
Now that he’ s free, Juan José Ramos Ramos, 39, insists he’ s not who President Donald Trump says he is. He’ s not a member of a gang or an international terrorist, just a man with tattoos whom immigration agents spotted riding in a car with a Venezuela sticker on the back.
Now that he’ s free, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he wondered every day of his time in prison whether he’ d ever hold his mother in his arms again. He’ s relieved to be back home in Venezuela but struggles to make sense of why he and the other men were put through that ordeal in the first place.“ We are a group of people who I consider had the bad luck of ending up on this blacklist,” he said.
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