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Andry Hernandez Romero, a 32-year-old gay asylum-seeker from Venezuela, told NBC News that one day during his imprisonment he was taken to solitary confinement, where prison staff “made me kneel, perform oral sex on one person, while the others groped me and touched my private parts” and “stroked me with their batons.”
He said he could not identify the guards because their faces were covered and the room did not have a lightbulb, with only a small amount of light coming in through a hole in the ceiling.
Hernandez said the incident left him devastated.
“I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to do absolutely anything,” Hernandez said. “The only thing I did was stay laying down, look at the toilet, remember my family, asking myself a million questions.”
Another detainee who spoke to NBC News, Jerce Reyes, said Hernandez told him after they were released that he was sexually abused by CECOT staff. Hernandez also said on Venezuelan state media that he was sexually abused while in CECOT.
“He told us that when we arrived in Venezuela, that he suffered abuse at the hands of guards there in El Salvador,” said Reyes, referring to Hernandez’s account of sexual abuse.
Hernandez said he was unaware of any formal system at CECOT through which he could report the alleged abuse and that if detainees tried to complain to superiors at the prison, they would often be subjected to beatings by guards.
‘You will not be leaving here’
Hernandez and others said they were repeatedly beaten by prison officials.
“Our daily bread there as Venezuelans were beatings, threats. For whatever circumstance,” Hernandez said. “If you answer an official, they hit you. ... If you talk, they hit you.”
“Every time they went to hit a large group outside, they would put us in the required position so we couldn’t see. And to hear the moans, to hear how they were hitting the people was also very heavy.”
Another detainee, Andry Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he and the other Venezuelans faced verbal, psychological and physical abuse from the day they entered CECOT.
“There were so many moments of anguish and terror,” he said in Spanish. “I feared for my life.”
Blanco Bonilla said that when they first arrived at CECOT, the men were shackled so tightly at the ankles that walking “would give us cuts and bruises.” He said the guards denied them food and access to bathrooms or showers as punishment.
Blanco Bonilla, who had gone to the U.S. to seek asylum, said he would never forget the words of a prison official who told the detainees, “Welcome to CECOT. Welcome to hell.”
“You will not be leaving here. Your days are over,” the official said, according to Blanco Bonilla.
The detainees would suffer beatings as the guards saw fit, he said.
“They tried to avoid hitting our faces. They kicked us in the back or ribs,” he said. “When they made us get on our knees, they would step on our toes with their boots. They hit us with batons, they hit us on the head.”
After a beating, Blanco Bonilla said he would be brought by guards to a prison doctor, who would say to him, “You hit yourself. How did you hit yourself?”
When he tried to tell the doctor that he was beaten by prison staff, a guard would hit him with a baton in the back, Blanco Bonilla said. The doctor would then ask him again, “How did you hit yourself?”
“I realized that if I didn’t tell them what they wanted, they would keep hitting me,” he said, adding that the doctor would then make a false report about the incident.
‘We are only migrants’
Reyes, 36, said one of hardest moments for him was when a prison official “encouraged us to commit suicide” and told him “this is how your whole nightmare ends.”
“I did think about committing suicide at some point. But I thought about my two daughters, I thought about my family,” he said about his two children, ages 3 and 6.
Reyes said there were days when “we woke up and all said to ourselves, ‘We aren’t getting out of here.’” He said he witnessed and experienced physical aggression from CECOT guards.
Reyes said he was thankful that he and other men were able to share copies of the Bible inside and motivate each other.
The detainees who spoke to NBC News said they had no contact with the outside world or access to U.S. officials during the four months they were held in CECOT.
Reyes did recall seeing Noem walk by when she toured CECOT in March, shortly after he and the others were sent there. She went past several cells that Salvadoran officials assured her held hardened criminals and gang members.
Reyes says he wasn’t told Noem was coming but remembers that day as the only day the detainees had gotten something cold to drink.
He said he and others pressed their faces to the bars and saw her. “We began screaming, ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom. We are not criminals. We are only migrants,’” Reyes said.
The men said their strong faith in God, love for their families and a belief that one day they would get justice helped them keep going during their most desperate moments.
“Reuniting again with my parents and children was a moment of such happiness,” Blanco Bonilla said.
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