Surviving CECOT: The Venezuelan Mothers Who Rescued Their Children from Bukele’s Prisons

By Irene Zugasti — Jul 30, 2025

When Joen Suárez, a 23-year-old Venezuelan, was forced into the Salvadoran maximum-security mega-prison known as CECOT (Center for the Confinement of Terrorism), everything was taken from him: his freedom, his time, his rights, his phone, and even his social media accounts, where he made music and shared moments of his life in New York. It is almost as if, by imprisoning him there, they wanted to make him disappear and erase him from the world.

Joen is one of the 252 young Venezuelans sent to CECOT, Bukele’s giant security project in El Salvador, which has now become “the prison of the living,” one of the most dangerous penitentiaries in the world. It is also one of the most controversial, given that the US Trump administration, in a lucrative agreement with Bukele, has “outsourced” the US prison system since February 2025. One provides the detainees, and the other, the torture, confinement, and starvation. All for approximately US $6 million annually, about US $20,000 per prisoner admitted to CECOT: a win-win of cruelty that Marco Rubio, secretary of state in Washington, boasted about, describing it as an “extraordinary” agreement.

For 125 days, Joen and hundreds of other young men, some barely of age, the vast majority migrants with no criminal record, were deported to El Salvador from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law revived by Trump that uses the crime of terrorism to expel them from the country. The excuse for persecuting them was their alleged membership in the Tren de Aragua criminal group, something that has not been proven with any firm evidence, as acknowledged by media outlets such as CNN, the Washington Post, and the international edition of the BBC.

The Salvadoran human rights organization Cristosal stated that only seven of the 252 had criminal records (six according to CBS). But the data mattered little, and the criminalizing narrative of repression and suspicion about these Venezuelans advanced. “We are not terrorists, and I will clear my name,” Joen asserted. The young men ended up being deported without trial or firm charges, without evidence, in isolation, and without legal representation. What Trump and Bukele called justice was nothing more than a system of absolute punishment.

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Alone, hungry, and disoriented, Joen sums up his experience in two words: “A lot of suffering and constant fear.” It is not easy to emotionally manage having a life and migration project thwarted so brutally, ending up in CECOT for being a migrant, Venezuelan, and having tattoos on one’s skin—the only three common traits leading to imprisonment and deportation without evidence. Anyone can be an inmate at CECOT.

“One of the anecdotes I remember a lot is that it was raining heavily at night, and I was wearing shorts with boxer shorts underneath,” recalls Joen, “and it was cold, and since I had scabies, I had to take off the shorts and tear them to cover myself with them.” But the worst part, he says, was the nights—the loneliness and the silence. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented torture, beatings, and killings by mechanical asphyxiation [at CECOT]. Miguel Sarre, a former member of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture, described CECOT as a “pit of concrete and steel.”

How do you manage such a return? For years, the dream of the American “El Dorado” was presented to young Venezuelans as a promise of prosperity from Washington, encouraging them to cross the Darien Gap and leave Venezuela. Today, the same people who encouraged them to flee their country expel them with raids, detentions, and mass arrests. Joen, who left to find work and try his luck in music in the northern United States, admits he did not expect this return home: “In my case, I was excited; the first year I was fine, but this new president comes along and does what he did to us. He took away my motivation to return. I want to stay here, to try it here in Venezuela.” Joen says he is receiving psychological help but remains optimistic: “I’m happy and I’m recovering because she’s helping me,” he says, putting his arm around his mother’s back.

His mother, Karlyn Fuentes, has emerged as a spokesperson for the women, some very young, others very old, who have coordinated to bring the voices of kidnapped children to the UN in Geneva and denounce the plight of their children. She founded the Movement of Heroic Women, and last Saturday, in Caracas, at a meeting with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, recounted how the organizing experience of the women who moved earth and air—never better said—to rescue their children from immigration abduction on July 18 came about. Because words matter: “Our children were kidnapped and disappeared,” she stated emphatically.

Negotiations to release the 252 detainees have been a complex diplomatic process that began in April with talks between the governments of President Nicolás Maduro and Donald Trump, with key mediation by former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as well as, according to some sources, by the Vatican and figures from the US Democratic Party. President Maduro played a central role, negotiating directly with the United States and avoiding any dialogue with Nayib Bukele, whom the leader of the Venezuelan negotiating team, Jorge Rodríguez, dismissed as a mere executor of US orders. The negotiations encountered several pitfalls and ultimately resulted in a simultaneous exchange. The 252 Venezuelans would return home while Venezuela handed over 10 US citizens detained and prosecuted in Venezuela for various crimes under national law. In addition, Venezuela agreed to release an as yet undetermined number—80 names are reported—of individuals associated with the Venezuelan opposition.

The bailout has generated a wave of domestic support for Maduro, interpreted as an exercise in sovereignty and negotiating power in the face of US blackmail. The municipal elections held last Sunday, July 27, affirmed support for the ruling party’s project at the local level, given that this crisis once again highlights the inability of the Venezuelan far-right opposition, with figures such as María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, to influence and play a relevant role in the country’s political life. While they aligned themselves with Trumpist hawks at the beginning of the CECOT crisis, their criticism today has focused on highlighting Zapatero’s participation in the negotiations and maintaining their refusal to recognize Nicolás Maduro’s government. A third, not insignificant element in understanding the scenario revealed by this bailout is once again the Trump administration’s internal division on foreign policy issues due to the divergences between Richard Grenell and Marco Rubio, especially regarding Venezuela.

“I felt the greatest strength when one of the boys’ grandmother died and when we learned that another boy committed suicide. That motivated us,” Karlyn replies as she watches her son calmly converse. Karlyn does not shy away from the uncomfortable questions, especially those regarding Venezuela’s image: “Give yourself the opportunity to get to know Venezuelans. We are hard-working, honest people. In our country, we have welcomed many people from abroad. And despite what we have been through, we still give a big hug to all those who come here.” When Karlyn refers to “what we have experienced,” she evokes the recent memory of the millions of Venezuelans who endured the harshest years of the blockade, sanctions, and economic war against the country, under which millions of migrants fled Venezuela. Many are now returning, drawn by an unprecedented economic recovery: the Return to the Homeland Program, which was created as a government policy to facilitate free return and acceptance in the country, has repatriated more than 1.3 million Venezuelans according to official government reports. In 2025 alone, 9,330 migrants have returned on 48 flights from countries such as the United States, Mexico, and Honduras, which many analysts interpret as a sign of an overall improvement in the country.

Venezuela Opens Investigation Into El Salvador’s Bukele Over Systematic Torture at CECOT

The CECOT crisis is part of a much larger and complex context of regional threats and alliances, where the brute force of Trumpism is reshaping trade and diplomatic relations and testing the negotiating limits of many governments. But at the center of it, despite themselves, are the lives and human rights of millions of people. Karlyn accepts that it is now her turn to fight for the future, having become a representative of this movement of mothers who have reached the United Nations for the freedom of their children. There are still 24 Venezuelan minors in the custody of the US after being separated from their deported parents, and nothing guarantees that the Trump strategy of immigration kidnappings and repression, with Bukele as its main partner, will continue.

“My son likes music,” Karlyn smiles, “and he’s writing a song about CECOT with other inmates about what they experienced there.” Joen stares into space and confidently begins to recite the verses of his song:

It was March 15, around 4 a.m.
They tell me to get ready, because a transfer is coming.
I ask for the reasons. They tell me they don’t have any.
I draw my conclusions. We’re heading to Vene.
The atmosphere on the plane remained in suspense.
Thinking it was an end. And it was just a beginning.

(Diario Red)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SL