Venezuelan men it deported to a prison in El Salvador in March
Executive summary
In mid‑March 2025 the United States flew a large group of Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s CECOT maximum‑security prison; reporting places the flights on March 15 and the deportations at roughly 240–261 people depending on the outlet [1] [2] [3]. The operation relied in part on a rarely used wartime statute, the Alien Enemies Act, and has since prompted allegations of procedural irregularities, reports of severe abuse in CECOT, and U.S. court orders demanding return or hearings for many of the deportees [1] [4] [5] [6].
1. What happened in March: the flights and the timeline
Multiple investigations and news outlets report that on or around March 15, 2025 the U.S. transferred hundreds of Venezuelan men from U.S. custody into flights bound for El Salvador and into the CECOT mega‑prison, an operation that was fast‑moving and, according to advocacy groups, planned in the preceding weeks [7] [1] [4].
2. How many were sent and the legal pretext used
Counts vary by source but reporting consistently identifies roughly 240–261 Venezuelan men moved in the March operation, with at least 137 of them said to have been designated under the Alien Enemies Act — a little‑used 1798 wartime law invoked by the administration as justification for rapid deportations [1] [2] [3].
3. The government’s characterization versus the men’s claims
U.S. officials publicly characterized many of the deportees as members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and framed the move as a national‑security measure, while reporting from human‑rights groups, lawyers and the deportees themselves documents that numerous men denied gang ties, many had no criminal records, and some were told they were being returned to Venezuela when in fact they were flown to El Salvador [1] [4] [3] [7].
4. Conditions in CECOT and allegations of abuse
Subsequent investigations by Human Rights Watch, Cristosal and media outlets documented allegations that Venezuelan deportees in CECOT faced severe physical, psychological and sexual abuse, that families and lawyers struggled to locate detainees, and that Salvadoran authorities and U.S. officials were not forthcoming about detainee whereabouts or conditions [5] [8] [9].
5. Legal challenges and U.S. court rulings
Challengers in U.S. courts argued the deportations violated due process because people were expelled without the usual hearings; by late December a federal judge — U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — ordered the government to arrange for the return of many of the deportees or to provide them with hearings, ruling that the expulsions had deprived them of legal process [10] [6] [11].
6. What happened afterward: prisoner swap and repatriation
While legal fights proceeded, a diplomatic prisoner‑swap in July 2025 resulted in Venezuelan authorities receiving scores of those deported from El Salvador, and Venezuela released ten jailed Americans in return; many deportees were ultimately returned to Caracas after months in CECOT [12] [13].
7. Remaining questions, competing narratives and implications
Reporting and advocacy organizations agree on the broad facts — men were flown to CECOT in March and later returned to Venezuela — but differ sharply on characterization and responsibility: U.S. officials frame the operation as a security response to organized criminal networks, while civil‑liberties groups and human‑rights investigators describe illegal mass removals, inadequate vetting, and torture in CECOT; open questions remain about how many deportees truly had gang affiliations, the accuracy of U.S. vetting, the full extent of abuses in El Salvador, and what remedies victims will receive as courts and NGOs continue investigations [1] [4] [5] [10].