Venezuelans deported to El Salvador in U.S. immigration crackdown
Karakas, Venezuela – In March, President Trump called the 1798 alien enemies law to declare the Aragua gang of Venezuela a foreign terrorist group.
Shortly thereafter, the US sent more than 250 Venezuelali, which the gang said it was part of El Salvador, where he was imprisoned in one of the most famous prisons in the country, and he was imprisoned for months in the terror imprisonment center, also known as CECOT.
Many men insist that they have no ties with the gang and have been rejected.
After continuing to be detained, men were sent home as part of a prisoner’s release of several Americans of Venezuela in July.
Venezuelan Chief Public Prosecutor said that the interviews with men revealed “systemic torture ına, including daily beatings, brutal foods and sexual abuse in Salvador prison. Men adapt to life in Venezuela, the most escaped due to the political and economic instability of their own countries.
Times photographed four of the Venezueliyans – Arturo Suárez, Angelo Escalona, Frizgeralvin Cornejo and ángelo Bolívar – for meeting their families and their lives outside the prison.
Arturo Suárez records a song in a studio in Catia neighborhood of Caracas. He composed the song in prison in El Salvador.
Arturo Suárez, 34
Suárez, a musician, met with friends to record a music video in North Carolina. Ten people were arrested that day. In the Salvador prison, he said that music was banned and that the guards beat him over and over again to sing. But he refused to remain silent. He wrote a song that spreads from the cell to the cell from the cell and became a anthem for the venezuels imprisoned with it.
“God spoke to me from Cell 31,” his words are partly. “He said, my son, be patient, the blessing comes soon…. Don’t let him kill your belief, he doubts anything because he won’t take long before he returns home.”
1. Suárez holds a heart that is shaped by bread and toothpaste with letters made of yarns of white shorts. 2. This tattoo of a bird allowed his family to describe Suárez in videos published by the Salvador government.
Suárez is checking his phone under a poster inviting his phone home in Karakas.
I thought I wouldn’t get out of there. I thought I would die there.
Suárez and other Venezuela migrants, who were deported to El Salvador, are seen in the El Valle district of Karakas.
Angelo Escalona, 18
Escalona, immigration and customs enforcement agents, musician’s friend Suárez’i swept in the same raid, just three months before taking him into custody was 18 years old. His dream was to be a DJ, and Escalona had saved Suárez to buy equipment just before his arrest. He didn’t have a tattoo, there was no criminal record, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When the deportation flight landed to El Salvador, he and the other Venezuels tried to resist being removed from the plane. El We all fixed our seat belts because we were venezueel people – we didn’t have to be there, ”El Salvador said. “But the Salvadoran police got on the plane and began to beat the people on the front.”
1. Angelo Escalona said that other Venezuela prisoners called him “El Menor” or Minor, because he was the youngest of the deported meat at the age of 18.
2. “Your family did not leave you,” a poster family members said during the protests demanding to be released.
3. Escalona’s aunt exhibits a poster with a letter written to her after her mother was released. “Son, I love you,” says Red.
When we arrive [at the prison]They said to us, ‘Welcome to the true hell – nobody leaves here unless they die’.
A view of the Antímano neighborhood of Caracas, where Frizgeraxt Cornejo lived with his family before going north to the United States.
Frizgeralth Cornejo, 26
In the mid -2014, Frizgeraxt Cornejo had a long walk from Darién Gap, a dangerous forest that separates Central and South America, and went north with three friends. Hoping to take asylum in the United States, he made an appointment with immigration officials through the CBP One application of Customs and Border Protection.
However, when the 26 -year -old Cornejo presented himself on the border, the authorities accused him of gang connection because of their tattoos. Everyone in the group was allowed, but not to him.
1. Cornejo has lunch at his mother Austria and his brother Carlos and Karakas’s Antímano neighborhood. 2. Cornejo walks with his brother Carlos in Sabana Grande neighborhood in Karakas.
Cornejo’s mother kisses Austria.
1. Cornejo shows his family’s neck tattoo that allows his family to identify him in videos published by the Salvador government. 2. US officials claimed that this tattoo tied him to the Aragua gang.
I never dreamed of being imprisoned to get tattoos.
The view of the neighborhood where ángelo Bolívar family lives in Valencia.
Ángelo bolívar, 26
Bolívar lived in Texas when he was arrested by ice agents and sent to El Salvador’s Cecot prison. Many tattoos are part of a family heritage she shares with her mother Silvia Cruz. His late father was a tattoo artist. It led to the imprisonment of tattoos, because the authorities saw them as proof of membership in the Aragua gang. Now he has returned to Valencia, about 80 miles east of Caracas.
They said I was a gang member because of my tattoos – because there was an hour and rosary. Ice agents also had roses and watch tattoos.
Bolívar in Valencia and his mother Silvia Cruz.
