Online: Investigating the Trump administration’s deportations to a maximum security prison in El Salvador #653

On March 15, hours after invoking an obscure, rarely used law from the 1700s, the Trump administration deported more than 230 Venezuelan men it had labeled as terrorists and gang members to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. The men, who have since been released, said they were tortured.

A team of ProPublica and Texas Tribune reporters, working in collaboration with Venezuelan journalists, spent several months investigating who the men really were. Contrary to the administration’s claims that the men were “some of the most violent savages on the face of the Earth,” internal records showed that officials knew that the vast majority of the Venezuelan men had never been convicted of crimes in the U.S. By and large, the men had not absconded from immigration authorities; they were in the system, and dozens had open immigration court cases or pending asylum claims at the time they were deported.

The news organizations published a first-of-its kind database with stories about the men, based on thousands of records and interviews with the relatives of more than 100 of them. After they were released in July in a prisoner swap, reporters interviewed nine of the men and reported on the brutal violence, torture and humiliation they said they endured for four months in the Salvadoran prison. Our video team produced two videos highlighting their experiences – and those of their families. All of the reporting was published in English and in Spanish, and widely co-published by news outlets in Latin America.