'The cemetery of living men'

Trump deportees tell of abuse in secretive mega-jail


By Valentina Oropeza, Cecilia Barría, Nicole Kolster and Gustavo Ocando Álex, BBC News Mundo
18 August 2025


Arturo Suárez says he was beaten by guards as soon as he arrived at El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison. When he regained consciousness - his glasses smashed - everything was blurred, he says, but he heard the greeting clearly.

"Welcome to hell. Welcome to the cemetery of living men. The only way you leave here is dead."

Arturo says the person speaking was the jail’s director, Belarmino García.

Cecot - the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism - was designed for the mass incarceration of El Salvador’s most violent and dangerous gang members, a symbol of President Nayib Bukele's hardline approach to the wave of murders and extortion that had terrorised the country.

Since it was opened in 2023, authorities have been secretive about life inside Latin America’s largest prison. And with few inmates ever let out, there has been little information available about what goes on behind its concrete walls and electrified fences.

But Arturo and 251 other Venezuelans have recently been released from Cecot, having been sent there in March in a deal between the US and El Salvador, as part of President Trump’s campaign of mass deportations of migrants.

. . .

"We had a white sheet. Some of the prisoners cut themselves and used their blood to write on it: 'We are immigrants, we are not terrorists. Help. We want a lawyer,'" Joén says, describing how they had hung it through the bars of their cell like a flag. Wilken says the scars from where he deliberately cut himself are still sore.

More:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-5bb1a625-2a25-4cc5-86f3-9132c7b9468a