After 125 days in silence, detained inside an El Salvador concrete fortress built to disappear people, Andry Hernández Romero is finally home in Venezuela, alleging he was tortured, sexually abused, and denied food while detained under a Trump administration deportation order that erased him from society.

Venezuela says it is opening a formal investigation into several Salvadoran officials, including President Nayib Bukele, over the alleged abuse of Venezuelan migrants deported from the US.

A makeup artist who became the face of more than 250 Venezuelan migrants deported by the U.S. to El Salvador's most notorious prison arrived home to his family after what he described as "an encounter with torture and death.

The alleged beatings began as soon as the Venezuelans arrived in El Salvador, Yamarte Fernandez said. The men, who were in handcuffs and chains, were immediately removed from the plane and taken to CECOT, where they say they were kicked, beaten and shaved.

The exuberant homecoming was in stark contrast to the welcome he received in March at El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison, where he says he and over 200 other Venezuelan nationals, accused by the Trump administration of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua, were violently ushered into the facility.

Francisco Javier Casique, one of 252 Venezuelans quietly deported to the mega prison, told Newsweek about their four-month detention in El Salvador.

“I’ve talked to the highest level at ICE,” U.S. border czar Tom Homan said in April, “and they’ve reassured me several times: Everyone that was removed under the Alien Enemies Act was a gang member and a terrorist.”

Judge Boasberg began the hearing by bringing up former Justice Department official Erez Reuveni's whistleblower complaint, saying that Reuveni's allegations "to the extent they prove accurate have only strengthened the case for contempt" against the administration.