Venezuelan men expelled from the United States to El Salvador's maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot, are suing the American aviation companies that transported them there. The legal action accuses the firms of civil rights violations, false imprisonment, negligence, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit was filed on July 17 in federal court in Washington DC by a team of human rights attorneys. It targets CSI Aviation and GlobalX, two companies hired by the Department of Homeland Security to carry out deportation flights. The complaint alleges that the companies worked alongside the US government to transport the men to El Salvador in violation of both US and international law, despite a federal judge ordering the flights to return.
The Flights and the Ignored Court Order
On March 15 of last year, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to expedite the expulsion of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants. The administration accused Venezuela's government under Nicolás Maduro of directing members of the gang Tren de Aragua to invade the United States. The administration never proved that the deported men were gang members.
That same day, GlobalX, operating at the direction of CSI, positioned three aircraft at a Texas airport in preparation for the expulsions. The flights carried 252 Venezuelan and Salvadorian men who had been held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. The expulsion followed a controversial deal in which the US agreed to pay El Salvador millions of dollars to detain deportees at Cecot.
After the planes departed for Central America, a federal judge in Washington DC ordered them to return. Both the administration and the airline companies disregarded the court order and proceeded to El Salvador. The lawsuit states that the companies knew Cecot was a facility from which no detainee had ever left alive, yet went to considerable lengths to complete the flights.
Conditions Inside Cecot and Lasting Harm
Upon arrival in El Salvador, Salvadorian security forces boarded the planes and beat the deportees, many later reported. The men were then transported to Cecot, where they were held for four months.
A November 2025 report from Human Rights Watch found that the men were subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law. Both the HRW report and the lawsuit describe brutal conditions inside the prison, accusing guards of beating, pepper-spraying, and firing rubber bullets at detainees, as well as sexually assaulting them.
The Venezuelan men were returned to their home country in July 2025 as part of a prisoner exchange deal involving three countries. The Salvadorian men sent on the same flights are believed to remain detained at Cecot. The US government has not released the full list of deportees sent to the facility.