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\n Venezuelan migrants accused by the U.S. of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang are seen being transferred from the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador before being repatriated to Caracas on July 18, 2025 in La Paz, El Salvador.
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El Salvador Press Presidency Office\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n
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El Salvador Press Presidency Office\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Carlos Daniel Ter\u00e1n, 19, still remembers the words a prison warden told him when he entered El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT.<\/p>\n
“He told us we were never going to leave this place,” Ter\u00e1n recalled.<\/p>\n
It was March of this year. Ter\u00e1n had just been transferred from an immigration detention center in Texas to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo<\/a> \u2014 known as CECOT \u2014 a maximum-security prison built to house accused Salvadoran gang members. El Salvador’s own justice minister once said the only way out of the prison was “inside a coffin.”<\/p>\n \n Carlos Daniel Ter\u00e1n, 19, poses at his aunt’s home in Caracas, Venezuela after being released from a maximum security prison in El Salvador. Via the Ter\u00e1n family<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Via the Ter\u00e1n family<\/p>\n Ter\u00e1n was among hundreds of Venezuelans sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration, many under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act<\/a>, a rarely-used wartime power. They were accused \u2014 without evidence \u2014 of being members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua<\/a>. For nearly four months, the U.S. government withheld the identities of the men it deported and barred them from contacting their families or lawyers.<\/p>\n Then just over a week ago, Ter\u00e1n was suddenly a free man \u2014 released alongside more than 250 other Venezuelan detainees as part of a prisoner exchange<\/a> between the U.S. and Venezuela.<\/p>\n “I thought this was going to be the last experience of my life,” Ter\u00e1n told NPR from Caracas. “I thought I was going to die there.”<\/p>\n “Hell on earth” <\/p>\n Since their release, NPR has spoken with Ter\u00e1n and two other former detainees about their time at CECOT. They described being subjected to violence \u2014 and, in some cases, sexual abuse \u2014 by prison guards, denied adequate food, and forced to endure inhumane conditions.<\/p>\n NPR has followed Ter\u00e1n’s case since he was first picked up by ICE from his home in Texas<\/a> in February. He had entered the U.S. legally through the Biden-era CBP One program. He has no criminal record in the U.S., and denies any gang affiliation. His only past offenses stem from charges in Chile as a minor – of gun possession and possessing or transporting small quantities of drugs.<\/p>\n Like Ter\u00e1n, the other Venezuelan’s sent to El Salvador from the U.S., have denied being affiliated to the Tren de Aragua<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although he describes himself as a man of faith, Ter\u00e1n said his days at CECOT were really hard for him.<\/p>\n “I felt really sad \u2014 I spent my birthday there and it was hard to not get a call from my family,” he said.<\/p>\n \n Juan and Marian, father and stepmother of Carlos Daniel Ter\u00e1n, who was taken into custody by law enforcement and immigration officers a week after President Trump took office, stand for a portrait in Cedar Park, Texas, on Jan. 29, 2025. Tamir Kalifa for NPR\/Tamir Kalifa<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Tamir Kalifa for NPR\/Tamir Kalifa<\/p>\n Inside CECOT, he and the other prisoners were rarely let out of their cells. The food consisted mostly of beans, tortilla and rice. The toilets in their cells were often clogged. And there was no air conditioning despite the hot and humid weather.<\/p>\n Prisoners could only bathe in water that was pumped into two cement tanks built into their cells. But only once a day, at a time set by the prison guards. There were no walls to separate the bathing areas, or the toilet, from the rest of the cell.<\/p>\n The detainees slept on metal planks arranged like bunk beds \u2014 no mattresses, blankets or pillows. Ter\u00e1n says he slept in a seating position the whole four months.<\/p>\n But Ter\u00e1n and the others say the worst part was how guards used violence against them.<\/p>\n Andry Hernandez, one of the detainees who was also released just over a week ago, told NPR that guards routinely beat prisoners with batons in the hallway \u2014 or dragged them to a small, windowless cell known as “La Isla,” or “The Island,” where the abuse was even more brutal.<\/p>\n According to Hernandez, 32, the prisoners would be dragged out of their cells for complaining about their conditions, taking a bath outside designated hours, or even for making too much noise.<\/p>\n Hernandez, who is openly gay, said he was once taken by the guards to “La Isla” after guards noticed him bathing with a bucket outside designated hours. <\/p>\n He said that he was beaten by three guards wearing masks. And forced to perform oral sex on one of the guards. After a couple of hours, he was dragged back to his cell.<\/p>\n “CECOT was hell on Earth,” Hernandez told NPR from Capacho, Venezuela, where he’s now back with his family.<\/p>\n \n Andry Hernandez greets his best friend Reina Cardenas, after police drop him off at home on July 23, 2025. Manuel Rueda<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Manuel Rueda<\/p>\n “Condemned for life.” <\/p>\n Opened in January 2023 as part of President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown, CECOT has remained largely off-limits to outside scrutiny\u2014its image tightly controlled through polished government videos and staged photo ops with visiting officials, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The Venezuelans released last week are among the first former inmates to speak publicly about what they endured inside.<\/p>\n According to the men NPR spoke to there were no books at CECOT except for Bibles, and prisoners were only allowed to leave their cells occasionally to play soccer in the hallway, or participate in prayer sessions led by an evangelical pastor who was also an inmate. Hernandez said that prisoners entertained themselves by chatting,or playing dominoes or parchis with pieces they had made from the tortillas they were served for lunch.<\/p>\n “The guards wanted us to be in total silence,” Hernandez said. “But for us that was very difficult, because by nature we Venezuelans are a happy people, who are accustomed to joking around, and screaming, even in dire conditions.”<\/p>\n \n Neighbors celebrate Andry Hernadnez’s return to his hometown of Capach on July 23, 2025. Manuel Rueda<\/p>\n <\/b> toggle caption<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Manuel Rueda<\/p>\n Andres Morales, a detainee from the town of San Antonio, in western Venezuela, told NPR that the beatings began as soon as the Venezuelans arrived at the prison. Guards told him he was “condemned for life.”<\/p>\n Morales said that during the first month in CECOT, the Venezuelan prisoners held a hunger strike that lasted for three days, where they demanded, unsuccessfully, to have contact with their relatives, and more information about their cases. He says that some days later, the prisoners became more desperate and staged a “blood strike.”<\/p>\n Both Ter\u00e1n and Hernandez corroborated Morales’ account.<\/p>\n “Some of the prisoners removed clamps from the cell’s piping and used them to cut themselves,” Hernandez told NPR. He said he did not participate in the protest, but described how other detainees smeared blood on the walls and wrote the letters “SOS.”<\/p>\n “We were treated like bargaining chips” <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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