His case became a symbol of the hard immigration policy of Donald Trump: the Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego García was deported “by mistake” from the United States and went to the Megacárcel for gang members built by President Nayib Bukele. After a Calvary of several months, he revealed that he suffered blows and psychological torture, as recorded in judicial documents revealed this Thursday.
Ábrego García, from Salvadoran nationality, suffered severe beatings, sleep and malnutrition deprivationamong other forms of torture from their jailers at the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), detailed their lawyers in a brief before a Maryland court, United States).
This is the first time that Ábrego García gives details of his experience in the CECOT, where he was sent last March with a group of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants despite having an order from an American judge who protected him from being deported to his native country.
This great prison was inaugurated by the Nayib Bukele government to enclose gang members who sow terror in the country.
Although activists They denounce human rights violations In those facilities, that of Ábrego García is one of the few direct testimonies of what happens there.
According to his story, released by his lawyers, “he underwent physical and psychological torture, including beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme overcrowding, poor diet, threats and constant exposure to bright lights.”
He and other migrants “were forced to stay on his knees “for several hours during the night and the guards hit anyone who fell into fatigue.
The detainees were confined in a cell with lights on 24 hours a day and piled up in metal bunk beds without mattresses.
“Access to the bathroom was also denied, forcing him to get dirty, and underwent constant humiliations and threats by the guards,” according to the complaint.
Due to the bad and insufficient food, Ábrego García lost 14 kilos during the two weeks in which he was held in the CECOTbefore being sent to another Salvadoran prison in the midst of the strong media pressure that his case generated in the United States.
Although the Supreme Court ordered its return to US territory by considering that its deportation had been “illegal”, the Trump administration and the Bukele government refused for months to facilitate its return, claiming, without evidence, that Ábrego García is a dangerous member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13).
However, on June 6, its return was completed after the US Prosecutor’s Office managed to make Ábrego García charged in a Tennessee court for positions of traffic of people, since in 2022 He was arrested driving a vehicle with undocumented migrants.
Abrego García is currently being held in a Nashville prison. He has declared himself innocent and his defense alleges that he is persecuted by the United States government to justify the error that was made with his deportation to El Salvador.
Although a judge ordered his release while lasting his judicial process, the defense requested that he remain in federal custody, since the customs immigration and control service intends to arrest him and deport him to a country other than El Salvador when he goes out.
Abrego García, 30, entered the United States irregularly in 2012, being a minor, and settled in the state of Maryland, where he met his wife, with whom he formed a family.
An immigration court determined in 2019 that he was “deportable” but an asylum judge issued an order that protected him from being sent to his native country due to the persecution suffered from the gangs. The Trump government deported it there despite the judge’s order, and then said it was an “administrative error.”