These are the accounts being shared by some of the more than 230 Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported on March 15 to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. Throughout the men’ s incarceration, the administration used blanket statements and exaggerations that obscured the truth about who they are and why they were targeted. The president has both hailed the men’ s removal as a signature achievement of his first 100 days in office and touted it as a demonstration of the lengths his administration was willing to go to carry out his mass deportation campaign. He assured the public that he was fulfilling his promise to rid the country of immigrants who’ d committed violent crimes, and that the men sent to El Salvador were“ monsters,”“ savages” and“ the worst of the worst.”
Few cases have gotten as much attention as the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. They were deported against the instructions of a federal judge, frog-marched off American planes and forced to kneel before cameras and have their heads shaved. The administration rebuffed requests to confirm the men’ s names or provide information about the allegations it had made against them. Meanwhile, the deportees were held without access to lawyers or the ability to speak to their families. Then, 12 days ago, they were returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap.
Now that they’ re home, they’ ve begun to talk. We interviewed nine men for this story. They are bewildered, frightened, angry. Some said their feelings about what happened were still so raw they had trouble finding words to describe them. All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment. Their relatives say they, too, went through hell wondering whether their loved ones were alive or dead, or if they would ever see them again. All the men said they were relieved to be free, though some said their release was proof the U. S. had no reason to send them to prison to begin with.
Blanco, for example, has no criminal record in the U. S., according to the government’ s own data. His only violation was having entered the country illegally. He’ d come because he wasn’ t earning enough to help his parents and support his seven children, ages 2 to 19, after his family’ s wholesale dairy and deli supply business failed. He arrived in December 2023 and turned himself in to immigration authorities in Eagle Pass, Texas, to request asylum. Then he was released to continue his immigration process.
Afterward, Blanco moved to Dallas and found work delivering food. In February 2024, he accompanied his cousin to a routine appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. While he was there, he decided to notify the agency that he’ d changed his address. On his way out of the building, an immigration agent stopped him and asked about his tattoos. He has several of them, including a blue rose, a father hugging his son behind railroad tracks and a clock showing the time his mother was born.
He said the tattoos signified his affection for his family, not evidence of affiliation with a gang. Records show the officials didn’ t believe him and detained him. While in custody, a judge ordered his deportation. However, because Washington and Caracas don’ t have diplomatic relations, the Venezuelan government was refusing to accept most deportees from the United States at the time. Immigration officials released Blanco back into the U. S. until they could send him home. For the next seven months, Blanco continued on in Dallas and picked up additional work as a mechanic. Then, shortly after Trump was inaugurated, ICE officers asked Blanco to come in for another appointment and detained him. A month later, despite Venezuela agreeing to take back some deportees, Blanco was on one of three planes bound for El Salvador.
“ From the moment I realized I was in El Salvador and that I would be detained, it was anguish,” he said.“ I was shaken. It hit me hard. Hard, hard, hard.”
To deport the Venezuelans, Trump invoked an obscure law from the 1700s known as the Alien Enemies Act. He declared that the men were all part of a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua that was invading the United States. Within days, CBS News published a list of the men’ s names, and there were anecdotal reports indicating that not all of the deportees were hardened criminals, much less“ savages.” By early April, several news organizations had reported that the majority of the men did not appear to have criminal records.
Administration officials dismissed the reports, saying that many of the deportees were known human rights abusers, gang members and criminals outside of the U. S. The fact they hadn’ t committed crimes in the United States, they said, didn’ t mean they weren’ t a threat to public safety.
To examine those claims, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Alianza Rebelde Investiga( Rebel Alliance Investigates) and Cazadores de Fake News( Fake News Hunters) launched an exhaustive investigation of the backgrounds of the 238 men on the list of detainees first published by CBS. Last week, we published a first-ofits-kind database that highlights our findings, including the fact the Trump administration knew at least 197 of the men had no criminal convictions in the U. S. Nearly half the men had open immigration cases when they were deported, and at least 166 have tattoos, which experts have told us are not an indicator of gang membership.
When asked for comment for this story, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, called ProPublica a“ liberal rag hellbent on defending violent criminal illegal aliens who never belonged in the United States.” She added,“ America is safer with them out of our country.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson echoed the White House’ s claim.“ Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend criminal illegal gang members,” the spokesperson said in a statement.“ We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”