In March of this year, despite a judge’s order and public outcry, more than 230 Venezuelan men were deported by the Trump administration to a violent maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. In late July, those men were suddenly released — with no explanation or apology for their brutal treatment. Now, in a collaboration between ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News, we can finally find out who these men are and what they endured. According to the accounts featured in “Now That They’re Free,” published last week, the experience was every bit as nightmarish as their families, friends and advocates feared it would be.

We interviewed nine men for this story. They are bewildered, frightened, angry. Some said their feelings about what happened were still so raw they had trouble finding words to describe them. All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment. Their relatives say they, too, went through hell wondering whether their loved ones were alive or dead, or if they would ever see them again. All the men said they were relieved to be free, though some said their release was proof the U.S. had no reason to send them to prison to begin with.

Despite statements by Trump and members of his administration that these men were violent criminals who threatened the very fabric of society, the vast majority of those sent to CECOT were nothing of the kind; most of them were innocent of any crime. According to ProPublica and its reporting partners, the investigation surfaced  

internal data showing the Trump administration knew that at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. — and that only six had been convicted of violent offenses. We identified fewer than a dozen additional convictions, both for crimes committed in the U.S. and abroad, that were not reflected in the government data.

Although these men are no longer incarcerated in a foreign prison, the Trump administration is expanding its own detention network through slapdash facilities in Texas, Florida and elsewhere, and in office buildings and basements in cities around the country. The fight to get some insight into what is happening inside places like the detention camp in southern Florida swampland is still ongoing.

For more, see ProPublica’s articles about a brutal new ICE tactic, one man’s journey from a Chicago immigration court to a Salvadoran prison and how companies that used to exploit undocumented workers are set to profit from detention camps.

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