Venezuela's Permanent Representative to the UN, Claudia Salerno, speaking at the 34th session of CCPCJ on May 19, 2025. Photo: UN Web TV.
A Cato Institute investigation reveals that no evidence has been provided as to what they did “to deserve incarceration in El Salvador.”
Venezuela’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), Claudia Salerno, denounced the actions of the United States and El Salvador against the more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who were abducted. The Venezuelans were denied any legal assistance and cash was exchanged for each of the abducted Venezuelans.
Salerno, speaking before the UN during the opening of the 34th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), said, “in El Salvador, these Venezuelans have been subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, flagrantly violating due process, the right to defense, the presumption of innocence, and the rules established for the treatment of persons deprived of liberty, including the Mandela Rules, to which El Salvador is a State Party.”
In light of this, she asked the plenary to record the conduct of these two Commission Member States, indicating that both countries are violating global migration governance and the global criminal justice system, according to a note from the Embassy of Venezuela in Austria.
Furthermore, she reaffirmed that this organization cannot forget what is happening today in Gaza, saying “any fight for justice must include, without double standards on the part of the United Nations system, ensuring the preservation of the lives of the people and the State of Palestine.”
United Nations: Venezuelans in El Salvador May Be Subjects of Forced Disappearance
New revelations
An investigation by the Cato Institute, a Washington DC-based civil liberties organization, revealed that at least 50 of the Venezuelan migrants sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador by the Donald Trump administration were sent there despite having entered the United States legally.
The study also reveals that, of the group of more than 240 Venezuelans that the US government illegally transported to the Central American nation, at least 75% of those abducted “had no criminal record in the United States or abroad. Less attention has been paid to the fact that dozens of these men never violated immigration laws either,” the investigation states.
The study also claims that the US has denied the migrants due process and withheld information requested by the victims’ families and lawyers, failing to provide evidence to support what they “did to deserve incarceration in El Salvador.”
Since last March, some 252 Venezuelan migrants have been detained at CECOT in the Central American nation; an act condemned by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who has promised to exhaust all diplomatic and legal avenues to secure the freedom of these Venezuelans and bring them back to Venezuelan territory.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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