Venezuela men sue aviation firms who flew them to notorious Salvadorian jail

The Cecot prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, where the Venezuelans deported from the US were imprisoned. Photograph: John Moore/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenThe Cecot prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, where the Venezuelans deported from the US were imprisoned. Photograph: John Moore/Getty ImagesVenezuela men sue aviation firms who flew them to notorious Salvadorian jailExclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdownVenezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there.

A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans’ civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador.CSI and GlobalX “went to great lengths” to undertake the “rendition flights” to El Salvador, “in concert with the US government, in flagrant violation of US and international law”, the lawsuit reads.Last year, in March, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men held in US immigration custody to El Salvador, where they were detained for four months in a maximum security terrorism prison and tortured.

The lawsuit accuses CSI and GlobalX of deliberately transporting the men to El Salvador, despite a federal judge ordering the flights to return and despite knowing they would probably be tortured inside the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center (known as “Cecot” by its acronym in Spanish).Without CSI and GlobalX’s complicity, “neither Plaintiffs nor the Class would have been rendered to CECOT”, the lawsuit reads.The suit was filed by a team of human rights attorneys on 17 July and is being reported first by the Guardian.

It is one of the latest attempts by rights groups to hold private contractors accountable for their role in alleged abuses stemming from the administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown.Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prisonRead more“Many people might not be aware of the degree to which private companies are intertwined with the human rights abuses occurring under the Trump administration through the detention and unlawful deportation schemes that are occurring,” said Anthony Enriquez, the vice-president of advocacy and litigation for the Kennedy Human Rights Center, in an interview with the Guardian. Enriquez is one of the attorneys representing the Venezuelan men.

CSI and GlobalX, which were hired by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have “enjoyed unprecedented financial profits from the scheme”, while the Venezuelans “continue to experience severe emotional suffering from the humiliation, terror, and cruelty that they endured”, the lawsuit says.The DHS did not respond to specific claims in the lawsuit and instead referred all questions to the Salvadorian government. CSI and GlobalX did not respond to a detailed request for comment by time of publication.

El Salvador’s government does not make efforts to publicly rebut allegations of brutal treatment inside Cecot. Online influencers are invited in to make videos of the harsh conditions.CSI Aviation Inc is incorporated in Texas and GlobalX is headquartered in Florida, with both companies playing a significant role in the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

The lawsuit says that the American companies were hired by the US government to conduct the El Salvador-bound deportation flights.CSI has helped broker “nearly all” deportation flights, the lawsuit says, via a multimillion-dollar contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the main agency within the DHS carrying out deportations. CSI is the single highest-value recipient of ICE contracts, the lawsuit adds, with revenue from ICE in 2025 totaling $1.

23bn.For the three flights to El Salvador, CSI sub-contracted with GlobalX, with CSI working as the “intermediary” between ICE and GlobalX, according to the lawsuit.On 15 March last year, Donald Trump stepped outside government norms to invoke the Alien Enemies Act as a strategy to expel hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants from the US.

The US president accused the Venezuelan government, at the time run by Nicolás Maduro, who is now facing trial in the US, of instructing members of the South American gang Tren de Aragua to “invade” the US.After invoking the Alien Enemies Act, the administration rounded up 252 Venezuelan and Salvadorian men in ICE detention and expelled them to El Salvador. This came after the US and El Salvador struck a controversial and opaque deal, in which the US would pay millions of dollars to El Salvador to detain deportees from the US in Cecot.

The administration never proved, and has still not proved, the Venezuelan men were members of Tren de Aragua.The same day that the Al