Michael Barbaro

Julie, you have spent the past many months investigating the plight of these roughly 200 Venezuelan nationals who were deported by the Trump administration from the U.S.

to a prison in El Salvador.

And along the way, you have...

broke story after story about who they are, what they did or didn't do.

And now you bring us your latest investigation.

So tell us what animated that latest probe and what you found.

Right.

It was the most indelible image in President Trump's mass deportation campaign because it felt the most unfamiliar and kind of brutal.

Right, which was met with a wall of resistance from the Trump administration who basically said, take our word for it that these are the worst of the worst.

Right.

And so it began to feel like a pretty endless black box.

Tell us about one of these men that you spoke to whose story is very consistent with what you heard from all 40.

Well, surely it wasn't just a taillight out.

And what does Luis describe as his journey to this prison in your conversations with him?

So, Julie, what are the conditions that Luis and the rest of these Venezuelans find in this prison?

They're supposed to drink their bathing water.

Correct.

It sounds like torture.

I mean, they are that despondent that they are writing messages of protest in their own blood.

That's how far gone the situation has become.