Venezuelan scarred after being sent to maximum security prison by Trump administration
Arturo Suarez cries as he hugs his family for the first time in months.
His sister’s modest home in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital city, is decorated with red, blue and black balloons and banners to welcome him back.
Friends and neighbours fill the living room and the street outside.
Mr Suarez reunited with his family
He video calls other family members elsewhere in the world. This is the first time they have heard his voice since March.
“I hadn’t felt so safe for a while,” Arturo tells Sky News, “when I hugged my brothers, my uncle, my aunt, that’s where I felt that the nightmare was over, that I had made it home.”
Then the story of what he had endured begins to pour out of him.
The 34-year-old was one of more than 250 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, despite having no criminal record in any of the four countries he has lived in.
Mr Suarez speaks to Martha Kelner
Last week, he was released as part of a prisoner swap with 10 American citizens and permanent residents detained in Venezuela.
But he is scarred by the four months he spent at the CECOT prison, a terrorism confinement centre, in El Salvador, alongside some of the world’s most dangerous men.
Arturo Suarez back with his family in Caracas
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“We were constantly beaten,” he says, “we suffered physical, verbal, and psychological abuse.
“There wasn’t a day the wardens didn’t tell us that the only way we’d leave that place was if we were dead. In fact, the first words the head of the prison said to us after the first beating was ‘welcome to hell’.”
Arturo is an aspiring singer. He had moved to the US to escape Venezuela’s authoritarian regime and set up home in North Carolina.
Mr Suarez is an aspiring singer
He had a feeling when Donald Trump became president for a second time that there would be a crackdown on immigration, as promised in his campaign.
But, because Arturo had followed all the legal channels to enter the country, he didn’t think he would be caught up in the deportation policy. He was wrong.
While he was filming a music video in a house in North Carolina in March, he was arrested by immigration agents and accused by the White House of being a gang member, although they have provided little evidence publicly to support that claim.
His family had not heard from him since March
He was then flown to El Salvador – a country he had never even visited – and put in a maximum security prison. His ordeal was under way.
“We were sleeping 19 people to a cell,” he says, “if we spoke loudly, they would take away our mattresses, if they found us bathing more than once a day, they’d take away the mattresses from us.
“The punishment was severe. It was beatings and humiliations and they took away our food.
“I remember we were exercising and a cellmate, very politely, asked the prison head if we could bathe a second time that day, since we were doing exercise.
“His words were ‘that’s your problem, it’s not my problem if you exercise’. We were also made to eat with our hands.
“They tried to take our humanity away from us. They tried to make us lose everything.”
The Trump administration paid El Salvador millions of dollars to detain the 252 Venezuelan men, claiming they were part of the notorious Tren De Aragua gang.
Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, visited the prison for a tour and photoshoot in March and Arturo saw her.
“Obviously they did a show of this,” he says, “they had cameras. When she came in, my cellmates and I began to make the help sign, which she disliked a lot. We began to shout freedom.”
Arturo was denied due process to appeal his extradition to El Salvador and was not allowed to speak to a lawyer or any family or friends during his time in prison.
I spoke to Arturo’s brother Nelson in April as he appealed for his release.
He said Arturo’s only crime was having tattoos, which the White House cited as evidence of involvement with gangs.
On a video call, Arturo shows me the tattoos.
Most of them, he says, are in tribute to his late mother. I ask if he thinks that the Trump administration believed he was a gang member.
“I think it was just an excuse to get us out,” he says, “we weren’t taken for having tattoos or belonging to a criminal gang.
“We were taken for being Venezuelans. And today I want to tell the world that being Venezuelan is not a crime.”
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When he applied for asylum in the United States, Arturo had hoped to be reunited eventually with his wife, Nathali, and their 10-month-old daughter Nahiara, who are currently in Chile.
“When I was given the opportunity to go to the United States, I was going to go with my wife,” he says, “we found out that she was pregnant but I went anyway because it was for the future, for my daughter’s future.
“Unfortunately, this decision led me to one of the most brutal prisons. What I most long for, is to be with my daughter and my wife.”
He’s now being supported by other family members in Venezuela, but he will never return to the US.
He went for a better life but instead was labelled a criminal. Now, he says, he just wants to clear his name.
World
‘Almost like a game of target practice’: British surgeon says IDF shooting Gazans at aid points
A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has told Sky News that there is “profound malnutrition” among the population – and claims IDF soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “like a game of target practice”.
Dr Nick Maynard spent four weeks working inside Nasser Hospital, where a lack of food has left medics struggling to treat children and toddlers.
The conditions inside the hospital, in the south of the Strip, have been documented in a Sky News report.
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Malnourished girl: ‘The war changed me’
Dr Maynard told The World with Yalda Hakim: “I met several doctors who had cartons of formula feed in their luggage – and they were all confiscated by the Israeli border guards. Nothing else got confiscated, just the formula feed.
“There were four premature babies who died during the first two weeks when I was in Nasser Hospital – and there will be many, many more deaths until the Israelis allow proper food to get in there.”
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
In other developments:
• Israel and the US have recalled their teams from Gaza ceasefire talks
• US envoy Steve Witkoff has accused Hamas “of failing to act in good faith”
• France has announced that it will recognise the state of Palestine
• An influential group of MPs is calling on the UK to “immediately” do the same
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‘Starvation used as a weapon’
‘They were shells’
Dr Nick Maynard has been going to Gaza for the past 15 years – and this is his third visit to the territory since the war began.
The British surgeon added that virtually all of the kids in the paediatric unit of Nasser Hospital are being fed with sugar water.
“They’ve got a small amount of formula feed for very small babies, but not enough,” he warned.
Dr Maynard said the lack of aid has also had a huge impact on his colleagues.
“I saw people I’d known for years and I didn’t recognise some of them,” he added. “Two colleagues had lost 20kg and 30kg respectively. They were shells, they’re all hungry.
“They’re going to work every day, then going home to their tents where they have no food.”
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Ex-Gaza aid worker claims personnel shot at Palestinians
IDF ‘shooting Gazans at aid points’
Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Maynard claimed Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “almost like a game of target practice”.
He has operated on boys as young as 11 who had been “shot at food distribution points” run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“They had gone to get food for their starving families and they were shot,” he said.
“I operated on one 12-year-old boy who died on the operating table because his injuries were so severe.”
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
Dr Maynard continued: “What was even more distressing was the pattern of injuries that we saw, the clustering of injuries to particular body parts on certain days.
“One day they’d be coming in predominately with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck, another day to the abdomen.
“Twelve days ago, four young teenage boys came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles and deliberately so.
“The clustering was far too obvious to be accidental, and it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice.
“I would never have believed this possible unless I’d witnessed this with my own eyes.”
Palestinians brought to Nasser Hospital after being shot by Israeli forces, according to hospital officials and eyewitnesses. Pic: AP
Sky News has contacted the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
An IDF spokesperson previously told Sky News it “strongly rejected” the accusations that its forces were instructed to deliberately shoot at civilians.
“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incidents are “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities”.
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Medics at Nasser hospital struggle to feed children
Gaza food situation ‘worst its ever been’
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Israeli military show aid waiting inside Gaza
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been managing the supply of aid to Gaza since Israel lifted an 11-week blockade in May.
It has four aid distribution sites, all of which are located in Israeli military zones, with journalists prohibited from entering.
More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the GHF took over, according to the UN.
UNRWA, its relief agency for Gaza, has heavily criticised the scheme.
Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said: “The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill.”
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Just a fraction of the aid trucks needed are making it into the enclave, the UN has said, while multiple aid groups and the World Health Organisation have warned Gazans are facing “mass starvation”.
Mr Lazzarini quoted a colleague on Thursday and said malnourished Palestinians in the Gaza “are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”.
In Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, they have virtually nothing left to eat.
Warning: This article contains images that some readers may find distressing.
Huda has lost half her body weight since March, when Israel shut the crossings into Gaza, and imposed a blockade.
The 12-year-old girl knows she doesn’t look well.
“Before, I used to look like this,” Huda says, pointing to a picture on her tablet.
“The war changed me. Malnutrition has turned my hair yellow because I lack protein. You see here, this is how I was before the war.”
Her mother says her needs are simple: fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, maybe a little meat – but she won’t find it here.
Huda can only wish for a brighter future now.
“Can you help me travel abroad for treatment? I want to be like you. I’m a child. I want to play and be like you,” she says.
Huda wishes for a brighter future
Amir’s story
Three-year-old Amir was sitting in a tent together with his mother, father and his grandparents when it was hit by projectiles.
Medical staff carried out surgery on his intestines and were able to stop the bleeding – but they can’t feed him properly.
Instead, he’s given dextrose, a mixture of sugar and water which has no nutritional value.
Amir’s mother and siblings were killed in an attack that also left his father ‘in a terrible state’
Medical staff performed surgery on three-year-old Amir – but can’t feed him properly
Amir’s mother and his siblings were all killed in the attack and his father is no longer able to speak.
“His father is in a terrible state and won’t accept the reality. What did these children do? Tell me, what was their crime?” Amir’s aunt says.
The desperate scenes of hungry children in Gaza have not been caused by scarcity.
There’s plenty of food waiting at the crossings or held in warehouses within the territory. Israel claims the United Nations is failing to distribute it.
Amir’s relative holds pictures of the toddler and his family before the war
Both Israel and the US have taken charge of the food distribution, with the UN’s hundreds of aid centres shut.
Instead, the UN tries to organise convoys but says it can’t obtain the necessary permits – and faces draconian restrictions on aid.
Sometimes food is made available at communal kitchens called ‘tikiya’.
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Malnourished girl: ‘The war changed me’
‘I want life to be how it was’
Everyone is desperate for whatever they can get – and many leave with nothing.
“It’s been two months since we’ve eaten bread,” one young girl says. “There’s no food, there’s no nutrition. I want life to go back to how it was, I want meat and flour to come in. I want the end of the tikiya.”
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Dr Adil Husain, an American doctor who spent two weeks at Nasser Hospital, treated a three-year-old called Hasan while he was there.
Weighing just 6kg, Hasan should be 15kg at his age.
“He needs special feeds, and these feeds are literally miles away. They’re literally right there at the border, but it’s being blockaded by the forces, they’re not letting them in, so it’s intentional and deliberate starvation,” Dr Husain tells me.
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Hasan died two days after Dr Husain examined him.
“It’s just so distressing that this is something man-made, this is a man-made starvation, this is a man-made crisis,” he says.
Israel says it has not identified starvation, but this feels like a situation that is entirely preventable.
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