Julie Turkewitz

And they also looked suspiciously at his tattoos, he recalled.

And why does all that end up mattering?

What we know is that in many cases, the Trump administration was using tattoos as a sign that these individuals were gang members and in fact had a rating system that it used to determine who was a supposed member of a gang and then to send people to this prison.

We have no evidence that Luis Chacon is or was a member of this gang, Render Agua.

Just like we have very little evidence that many of these men were members of this gang.

Nevertheless, they were sent to this prison and the Trump administration has said publicly that they were all part of this gang.

Luis Chacon has a very interesting journey to the prison in El Salvador.

He describes asking to be deported to Venezuela.

He does not want to extend his time at all in detention because he knows that he needs to get out and be somewhere where he can make some money to support his family.

He has heard about these men going to El Salvador.

He's very scared that he's going to be sent to El Salvador.

He says that he was assured that he was not going to El Salvador.

And then he is loaded onto this deportation plane.

But eventually they do land in El Salvador and the men who were on these planes described looking out their window, seeing a sign that indicated that they had arrived in El Salvador and just the terror of realizing that they might be staying there.

They talked about Salvadoran guards getting on the plane.

One of them talked about sort of trying to tighten their seatbelts in this feeble attempt to stay on the plane.

And then, of course, being forced off.

of the airplane, and these guards are just bending these guys at the waist, slamming them down the stairs, against vehicles, onto buses, and bringing them into this feared prison where they are forced to their knees, where they are shaved.

And eventually thrown into these prison cells, which have these four plank metal beds that someone described as a sort of living morgue.

And Luis specifically recalls being told, This is hell?