Tears of joy and relief filled the air on Tuesday as 37-year-old Venezuelan migrant Maikel Olivera reunited with his family after spending four harrowing months in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
Olivera was among 252 Venezuelans deported by the United States and sent in March to the maximum-security facility built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house gang members. Their detention was part of a controversial migrant crackdown backed by the Trump administration, which paid millions for El Salvador to accept deportees.
Upon returning home, Olivera was met by family and friends waving Venezuelan flags and cheering outside his home in Barquisimeto, after several days of medical checks and questioning by Venezuelan authorities.
You’ve come back to life, my love! his mother, Olivia Rojas, cried as she embraced him.
Describing his experience, Olivera said CECOT was “real hell.”
There were beatings around the clock. They told us, ‘You’ll rot here for 300 years.’ I thought I’d never see Venezuela again, he told AFP.
He also revealed horrific abuses, saying detainees were denied visits, starved, and in some cases sexually assaulted.I had a friend who was gay — they raped him. They beat us just for taking a shower,” Olivera recounted.
The Venezuelan government, despite facing international criticism for its own prison system, has accused El Salvador of torture and human rights violations. It claims the prisoners were beaten, shot with rubber bullets, sexually abused, and fed rotten food — all without evidence of gang affiliations or due legal process in the U.S.
Images shared earlier by Bukele showed the migrants shackled and shaven-headed upon arrival at CECOT, prompting outrage from rights groups.
Another returnee, Mervin Yamarte, 29, broke down in tears as he reunited with his wife, young daughter, and mother in Maracaibo.
It was pure torture. I have many scars, Yamarte said.
His mother, Mercedes, had decorated their modest home with Venezuelan flag-themed balloons and a banner that read, Welcome to your homeland — you were missed.
The migrants had fled Venezuela’s collapsing economy and political turmoil under President Nicolás Maduro, seeking work in the United States to support their families. Most had no criminal record and had simply hoped for a better life.
These were just humble people with dreams, not criminals, said Jonferson Yamarte, Mervin’s brother, who narrowly avoided the same fate by returning home via a humanitarian flight.
Venezuela has lost nearly eight million people to emigration — almost a quarter of its population — in recent years. For those who returned this week, the journey for survival turned into a nightmare they hope never to relive