Venezuelan 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 ۲۳۰ 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 ۱۷ 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.
“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 ۲۰۲۵ totaling $۱.۲۳bn.
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 ۱۵ 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 ۲۵۲ 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 Alien Enemies Act was invoked, GlobalX, “working at the behest of CSI”, positioned three planes at an airport in Texas in preparation for the expulsion, the lawsuit says.
After the flights had taken off to Central America, a federal judge in Washington DC ordered they return to the US. The administration and airline companies ignored the court order and eventually arrived in El Salvador.
“Despite knowing that El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (‘CECOT’) mega-prison was a notorious blacksite, from which no detainee had ever left alive, Defendants went to great lengths to transport Plaintiffs and Class Members there, in concert with the US government, in flagrant violation of U.S. and international law,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants evaded or ignored judicial oversight and the foreseeable risk of torture and successfully delivered Plaintiffs and the Class to El Salvador for imprisonment at CECOT.”
The real horror began for the men once they landed in El Salvador, with many thinking they had at least arrived home to Venezuela. Salvadorian security forces boarded the planes, beat the deportees, many later said, and transported them to Cecot.
According to a November ۲۰۲۵ report from Human Rights Watch, the men were “subjected to what amounts to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law”.
The HRW report and lawsuit also detail brutal conditions and torture inside Cecot, accusing guards of beating, pepper-spraying, firing rubber bullets and sexually assaulting detainees.
Lawmakers, families and members of the public protested against the immigrants’ detention in Cecot. News reports revealed the identities of some of the men, showing that some were falsely accused of being gang members.
Four months later, in July ۲۰۲۵, the group of Venezuelans were returned to their home country after a prisoner exchange deal involving the three countries. The group of Salvadorians, also sent to Cecot in those flights, are still presumably detained there. To this date, the US government has not released the entire list of deportees sent to Cecot.
The Venezuelan men continue to struggle with long-lasting health effects and mental health trauma, the lawsuit says. The three main plaintiffs in the case experience daily headaches, difficulty sleeping and emotional distress from the experience.
CSI and GlobalX “have enjoyed unprecedented financial profits from the scheme and their relationship with the Administration”, the lawsuit says, while the Venezuelan men “continue to experience severe emotional suffering from the humiliation, terror, and cruelty that they endured”.
The companies have not yet responded to the lawsuit. Federal judge James Boasberg, who is presiding over the original Cecot deportation case, will be overseeing the lawsuit’s proceedings and determine whether the entire class of Venezuelans can sue.
