Men recently reunited with loved ones in their home country detail months of abuse at the facility
Venezuelan men who were deported by the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home. A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.
Carlos Uzcátegui tightly hugged his sobbing wife and stepdaughter on Wednesday morning in western Venezuela after he had been away for a year.
Uzcátegui was among the migrants being reunited with loved ones after four months in prison in El Salvador, where the US government had transferred them without due process, sparking uproar among critics of Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration agenda. The US had accused all the men, on sometimes apparently flimsy evidence, of being members of a foreign gang living in the US illegally.
“Every day, we asked God for the blessing of freeing us from there so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,” Uzcátegui, 33, said. “Every day, I woke up looking at the bars, wishing I wasn’t there.
