This could be an information operation out of Caracas, but very disturbing reports have emerged from Venezuelan citizens who returned home after an—undoubtedly—bitter stay in the Center of Confinement of Terrorism, a Salvadoran maximum‑security megaprison (CECOT in Spanish). They were sent there by the Trump administration, which relied on a very little‑used, wartime‑focused piece of legislation from the late eighteenth century, a move that was challenged in the courts by immigrant rights groups. The controversial Salvadoran leader Nayib Bukele, according to a New York Times investigation, secured a $5 million payment to his government coffers for playing jailer—though it has been said the deal was worth $6 million.
Although Bukele is immensely popular in his country for his hardline security policy against gangs, the effectiveness of the latter has been tarnished by the erosion of the rule of law that any state of exception embodies: when Salvadoran security forces cast their wide net to catch criminals, they can haul in many law‑abiding citizens as well. Criticizing this perspective equates Bukele with the MAGA approach—the one that repudiates institutions like UNESCO as part of a "woke, globalist agenda"—, and it has surely earned him a red carpet at the White House, although it is clear that his chief selling point was precisely “housing” these 252 Venezuelans in his CECOT, many of them with no proven ties to the Venezuela‑born gang known as the Tren de Aragua (the Aragua Train).
Back at home (source of the image).In addition to the dollar payment, it has also been claimed that Trump gifted San Salvador several MS‑13 gang leaders who had knowledge of an alleged Bukele‑gang link. Moreover, for the people who run business on Pennsylvania Avenue, going to El Salvador right now is safer than even traveling to France or Spain. To underscore American double standards further, just look at how they apply different criteria to decide whether a TPS should be extended, as the narrative is adjusted to fit political interests. In the case of Nicaragua, on July 7 the Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Nicaragua. “[TPS] was never meant to last a quarter of a century,” said a spokesperson for the agency led by Kristi Noem. “The impacts of a natural disaster impacting Nicaragua in 1999 no longer exist. The environmental situation has improved enough that it is safe enough for Nicaraguan citizens to return home. This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that TPS remains temporary,” the unnamed official added.
However, in the Salvadoran case, the Republican administration has not touched the TPS that was activated for Salvadoran immigrants back in 2001, after the impact of a powerful and very mortal earthquake. The measure was extended at the end of the Biden administration’s term.
What do the Venezuelans who were in Bukele’s “hell” say?
“Every day [there], we asked God for the blessing of freeing us […] so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,” Carlos Uzcátegui, 33, told AP. “They beat us, they kicked us. I even have quite a few bruises on my stomach,” he reported from the Venezuelan town of Lobatera, showing “a mildly bruised left abdomen.” "They beat us with their hands, shields and clubs, everywhere on our bodies," Alirio Belloso, another "guest" in the CECOT, stressed to Reuters from his home in Maracaibo. “It [was] hell. We met a lot of innocent people,” Adolfo Suárez, an urban musician who was detained while filming a video in North Carolina back in February, told AP about his time there. “To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: ‘Vengeance and justice are mine, and you will give an account to God the Father.’”
SourceInfluential Bolivarian leader and current Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello claims that only 7 of the 252 returned Venezuelans had criminal records at home, which does not necessarily preclude the possibility that some of the remaining 245 committed crimes either inside or outside the country, including potential links to organized crime in general and the Tren de Aragua in particular. Thus, I do not discount the veracity of these reports of tortures and the like in the CECOT, nor the possibility that these Venezuelans, having been mistreated by Trump and Bukele, might be part of an information operation by the Miraflores Palace, since—even though they fled their homeland because they could not tolerate their living conditions there—it was ultimately the Bolivarian government that saved them from this nightmare by negotiating with Trump and taking decisive action. Yet, I am more for the former. “Once again the media is falling all over themselves to defend criminal illegal gang members,” U.S. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Reuters about these claims.
