Michael Barbaro

But I think as journalists we have to ask it.

How do you and our colleagues go about making sure that this harrowing testimony is true?

You basically asked them to audit your reporting.

And I think it bears repeating that

This is torture inflicted on men whose deportation to this prison was not based on any normal legal process.

They were never tried on allegations of being terrorists.

In fact, the only judge who ever touched their case was a federal judge in the U.S.

who tried to stop the flights carrying many of them from ever landing in El Salvador, an order that the Trump administration pretty much ignored.

And in the case of Luis, yes, there are charges of theft in the U.S.

that in theory might merit a regular old deportation.

But in no world would the allegations against someone like him ever seem to justify beatings and torture in a prison in El Salvador.

Correct.

I'm curious what motivated the release of these men, if inevitably releasing them would mean that they could tell these stories to the world, stories of essentially torture.

So in the end, it's Maduro, not Trump, who forces these men's awful saga to come to an end.

So I just want to reflect on what happened in this prison and why it happened.

And at the end of the day, it happened because the Trump administration wanted it to happen.

And I'm old enough, and I suspect you are too, to remember when the United States had to reckon in a very visible and official way that

with the idea that it had carried out torture systematically after 9-11 to those that the U.S.

had detained in response to those terror attacks that year.

And when the conduct that occurred to these detainees was revealed, American officials, members of Congress—