Below is the full CECOT Interview from CBS Canada courtesy of Timothy Burke.
I’ve watched it. It is devastating. Every person should watch and know how their tax dollars are being spent to torture and sexually abuse people. Let’s Address This.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
CBS News / 60 Minutes — Transcript: CECOT Deportations and Detention
You may recall earlier this year when the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan men to El Salvador, a country most had no connection to. The White House claimed the men were terrorists, part of a violent gang, and invoked a centuries-old wartime power, saying it allowed them to deport some men immediately without due process—an unusual strategy that sparked an ongoing legal battle.
Tonight, you’ll hear from some of those men. They describe torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons, where they say they endured four months of hell.
It began as soon as the planes landed. The deportees thought they were headed back to Venezuela, but then saw hundreds of Salvadoran police waiting for them on the tarmac. Shackled, they were paraded in front of cameras, pushed onto buses, and delivered to CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison.
“When we got there, the CECOT director was talking to us. The first thing he told us was that we would never see the light of day or night again. He said, ‘Welcome to hell. I’ll make sure you never leave.’”
“Did you think you were going to die there?”
“We thought we were already the living dead. Honestly.”
We met Luis Muñoz Pinto in Colombia. He was a college student in repressive Venezuela and hoped to seek asylum in the United States in 2024. He says he waited in Mexico until his scheduled appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in California.
“During that interview, they just looked at me and told me I was a danger to society.”
“You have no criminal record?”
“Nothing. I never even got a traffic ticket.”
Nevertheless, he was detained by Customs. He says he spent six months locked up in the U.S. waiting for a decision on his asylum case—then he was deported.
He was one of 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT between March and April. Inside, he says their hands and feet were tied, they were forced to their knees, and their heads were shaved.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves. When you get there, you already know you’re in hell. You don’t need anyone else to tell you.”
He says the guards began savagely beating them with their fists and batons.
“Tell me about what they did to you personally.”
“Four guards grabbed me and they beat me until I bled to the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”
CECOT—the Terrorism Confinement Center—was built in 2022 as a key part of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s sweeping anti-gang crackdown. The massive prison, designed to hold 40,000 inmates, and its harsh reputation are a point of pride for Bukele, who regularly allows social media influencers to tour it.
“As you can see, we’re literally in the middle of the desert.”
Guards show off crammed cells where metal bunks are stacked four high. There are no mattresses or sheets. Inmates say they had no access to the outdoors and no contact with relatives.
International observers warned CECOT was violating the U.N. standard for minimum treatment of prisoners. Two years ago, during the Biden administration, the U.S. State Department cited torture and life-threatening prison conditions in its report on El Salvador.
But this year, during a meeting with President Bukele at the White House, President Trump expressed admiration for El Salvador’s prison system.
“They’re great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don’t play games.”
In March, the U.S. struck a deal to pay El Salvador $4.7 million to house Venezuelan deportees at CECOT.
“These are heinous monsters—rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators—who have no right to be in this country, and they must be held accountable. These people are the worst of the worst.”
“These people are migrants. And the sad reality is that the U.S. government tried to make an example out of them. They sent them to a place where they were likely to be tortured to send migrants across Latin America the message that they should not come to the United States.”
Juan Pappier is a deputy director at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch. In an 81-page report released in November, the organization concluded there was systematic torture and other abuses at CECOT, and that nearly half of the Venezuelans the U.S. sent there had no criminal history. Only eight of the men had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.
“How do you know they weren’t gang members?”
“We cross-reference federal databases, databases in all 50 states, and also obtain criminal records in Venezuela and in the countries where these people lived. And the information we obtained in the United States is based on data provided by ICE.”
“So ICE’s own records say—”
“ICE’s own records say that only 3% of them had been sentenced for a violent or potentially violent crime.”
60 Minutes reviewed the available ICE data. It confirms the findings of Human Rights Watch. It shows 70 men had pending criminal charges in the U.S., which could include immigration violations. The Department of Homeland Security has never released a complete list of names or criminal histories of the men it sent to CECOT.
Rapid deportations have been a key part of the Trump administration’s immigration overhaul. The administration considers anyone who crosses the border illegally to be a criminal. Illegal crossings are now at a historic low, but some immigration attorneys say the administration has used flawed criteria to justify deportations.
“I have some tattoos. None of them have anything to do with any criminal group. I explained to them that I didn’t belong to any gang, to which the agent responded, ‘But you are Venezuelan.’”
60 Minutes reviewed the document agents used to assess Venezuelans. A person with eight points was designated as a Tren de Aragua gang member. Tattoos earned points toward that designation.
But criminologists say tattoos are not a reliable way to identify Venezuelan gang members. Unlike some Central American gangs such as MS-13, Tren de Aragua does not use tattoos to signal membership.
Venezuelan national William Lázaro Sánchez was also deported to CECOT. He described months of abuse and being forced into stress positions.
“So you had to be on your knees for 24 hours?”
“Yes. Because they put a guard there to watch us so that we wouldn’t move.”
“And what would happen if you couldn’t make it?”
“They’d take us to the island.”
“What’s the island?”
“It’s a little room where there’s no light, no ventilation, nothing. It’s a cell for punishment where you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”
“After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour and pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us. The torture was never ending.”
Some deportees described being sexually assaulted by guards.
“They were hitting your private parts?”
“They tugged at them with their hands. They did that to multiple people—most of us.”
The men say they grew weaker by the day. They claim the prison lights were left on 24 hours a day, making it difficult to sleep, and that food and medicine were often withheld.
“Did you have access to clean water?”
“They never gave us access to clean water. The same water from our baths and toilets was the same water we had to drink and survive on.”
“If we had serious injuries, the doctors told us that drinking water would heal it.”
“So they’re telling injured prisoners to drink filthy water?”
“Super filthy.”
In late March, about ten days after the first U.S. deportees arrived, the Secretary of Homeland Security toured the prison.
“Did they speak to any prisoners?”
“Never. We only saw the cameras.”
In a separate area of the prison, the Secretary recorded a video thanking El Salvador for partnering with the United States to incarcerate “terrorists.” The heavily tattooed men behind her were not Venezuelans. Human Rights Watch confirmed they were Salvadorans accused of gang leadership.
A team of students at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center helped verify deportee accounts using satellite imagery, open-source data, and influencer videos filmed inside CECOT. They identified isolation cells matching descriptions of “the island” and confirmed the presence of batons and stress positions described by detainees.
A prison warden also confirmed the lights remain on 24 hours a day.
Using extreme temperatures or constant light to disorient inmates is prohibited under U.N. standards.
Alexa Koenig, director of Berkeley’s Investigations Lab, said the convergence of testimony and physical evidence builds a strong case for accountability.
The Department of Homeland Security declined an interview and referred questions to El Salvador, whose government did not respond.
In July, after four months, the 252 Venezuelan men were released from CECOT and sent back to Caracas in exchange for ten Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
The Trump administration has arranged additional deals—some worth millions of dollars—to deport migrants to third countries they have no connection to, including South Sudan and Uganda, both of which have well-documented histories of torturing prisoners.
