Tears of joy as Venezuelan migrants return from El Salvador prison 'hell'
By Ramon Veliz, with Margioni Bermudez in Maracaibo
Tears of joy and relief flowed freely Tuesday as Venezuelan Maikel Olivera returned home to his mother's embrace after surviving four months of "real hell" in a Salvadoran prison.
The 37-year-old is one of 252 Venezuelan migrants flown home last Friday from a notorious "anti-terrorism" prison where they were sent by the United States in a fear-inducing crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Family and friends waited impatiently for Olivera to finally be released by Venezuelan officials after days of medical tests and questioning, breaking out in tearful cheers and waving Venezuelan flags as they saw a police car approaching his family home Tuesday.
"You've come back to life, my love!" Olivera's mother Olivia Rojas exclaimed, hugging her son and lovingly stroking his face before taking a step back to look him up and down for any signs of distress.
Cars honked in celebration and one person in the crowd wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Migrating is not a crime."
When the clamor died down, Olivera described the CECOT prison he and his compatriots were held at as "real hell."
"There were beatings 24 hours a day," he told AFP of the experience.
"They told us: 'you will rot here, you will be imprisoned for 300 years.' I thought I would never return to Venezuela again."
The CECOT was built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house dangerous criminals in a successful but much-criticized war on gangs.
Bukele accepted payment of millions of dollars from the US President Donald Trump's administration to add migrants deported from the US to his prison population in a move widely denounced by human rights groups.
After four months incommunicado, Olivera and the others were finally freed in a prisoner exchange deal with Washington.
And not a minute too soon.
Caracas -- itself under investigation for alleged rights violations in its own prisons -- says the men were beaten, shot with rubber bullets, sexually abused and given rotten food to eat during their incarceration.
'They raped him'
The men had been sent to El Salvador despite US officials not providing any evidence for claims that they were gang members, and without any due process on American soil.
The last they were heard of was when Bukele shared images of the men arriving at CECOT in chains, their heads shorn.
Olivera said he and the others were not allowed to receive visits from lawyers or family members.
"I had a friend who was gay, they raped him," he said. "They beat us just for taking a shower."
Olivera was delivered Tuesday by authorities to the city of Barquisimeto, a more than four-hour drive west from the capital Caracas where the men arrived in two planes last week, and on the way to Maracaibo, where more families waited.
Mercedes Yamarte, 46, worked for days to prepare a special meal and decorate her humble home in a poor Maracaibo neighborhood with balloons in the colors of the Venezuelan flag, bursting with impatience for the return of her son Mervin, 29.
The banner outside read "Welcome to your homeland, you were missed," and inside a poster bearing Mervin's photo reads "Welcome home."
As the hours passed Tuesday, several false alarms saw the community jump up in excited anticipation, just to sit down again on the plastic chairs they had arranged in a shady spot on a hot day.
But Mercedes remained calm. She had spoken to her son, she said, and knew he was on his way.
When word of the men's release from CECOT spread last week, people from the neighborhood had gathered around a TV in Mercedes's living room to try and spot their loved ones among the passengers getting off the planes.
Among them was Yarelis Herrera, 45, who told AFP her son Edwuar Hernandez appeared "very changed. He looks more like a man now."
He is 23.
"They have no record of criminal activity, nothing. Humble people seeking a better future who ended up in this nightmare," Mervin Yamarte's younger brother Jonferson told AFP.
He had escaped a similar fate by returning home from the United States on a humanitarian flight organized by Caracas.
Olivera, Yamarte, and many others risked the dangerous journey to the United States to find work and send money home to economic and political crisis-riddled Venezuela.
The South American country has lost about a quarter of its population -- some eight million people -- to emigration under President Nicolas Maduro, whose claims to victory in two successive elections are widely considered illegitimate.
© 2025 AFP
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