Signs Of Life | Translation

► Click here to return to the episode official page, or here to see all the episodes.

🚨 Latino communities are under attack. Independent media is losing funding. Right now, telling our stories with rigor and empathy isn’t optional—it’s essential. To keep going, we need you. Today we launch our Deambulantes campaign and we need 5,000 people to join us before the end of the year. DONATE TODAY. Every contribution—recurring or one-time—makes a difference.

►Do you listen Radio Ambulante to improve your Spanish? We have something extra for you: try our app, designed for Spanish learners who want to study with our episodes.

---

The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence 

[Daniel Alarcón]: Hello, Ambulantes. Before we begin, I want to tell you that we are in the middle of our most critical fundraising campaign of the year. And today is Giving Tuesday, a global day to support nonprofit organizations.
These are difficult times in the region, but at Radio Ambulante Studios, we choose to look at the world as it is; we don’t look the other way. And we do this because we know that you are with us. Together we are braver.

Plus, we have great news: NewsMatch will double the donations we receive. If, for example, you donate $15, we will receive $30.
So, if you value the journalism we do—almost daily—about Latin America, this is your perfect opportunity to help us.
Go to radioambulante dot org diagonal donate. Every amount counts. Thank you so much!

Ok, here’s the episode.

Before we begin, a warning. This episode contains strong scenes and explicit language.

This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón.

It will soon be a year since Donald Trump’s administration took office for the second time. And in that short span, it already feels like a different country than it was a few months ago. Especially for the migrant population. And for Latinos.

[Archive host]: Trump far exceeds President Biden in monthly arrests and deportations. They went from 40,000 to 60,000 detainees, and from 13,000 to 30,000 deportations. That is, more than double.

 [Archive host]: The Trump administration will have 170 billion dollars to increase border security and advance its priorities in the immigration system.

[Archive host]: Chicago is the scene of what’s being called the Midway Blitz, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is intensifying detentions and raids against people primarily of Latino origin to deport them.

[Archive host]: The Trump administration.

[Daniel]: Personally, as a Latino who grew up in the United States, where I’ve made my life and formed my family, this new reality is hard to process. There’s a constant attack: detentions, mass raids, human rights violations, dismantling of institutions and all kinds of protections for a vulnerable population.

Thousands of lives have changed as a result of this government’s policies. During this year, we’ve seen fear, we’ve seen cruelty, we’ve seen that the guarantees we had as people living in a free society cannot be taken for granted. It’s damage we don’t know if it can be repaired. And if it can… it will take a long time to do so.

Today’s episode is about that.

Journalist Nadia Reiman tells us the story.

 Here’s Nadia.

[Nadia Reiman]: When Mari shows me this video, I feel like I’m watching something very intimate.

[Mari]: Here, look, look—here he was tattooing himself.

[Nadia]: On the screen appears her fiancé, Mikael. Venezuelan. He’s young, 24 years old, appears shirtless and has bright green eyes. His blond, curly hair is hidden under a cap. And in his hand he has one of those guns used for tattooing… he’s tattooing his own stomach… and Mari teases him, saying she won’t let him tattoo her again. Mikael has already done nine tattoos on her: the first was a tree of life.

He looks up and laughs, his mouth full of braces.

Mari always makes fun of Mikael’s tattoos a bit. She can’t mention them without rolling her eyes.

[Mari]: On this arm, he has many. He has a pineapple that I always asked him, why did you tattoo a pineapple? And he says it’s because he likes pineapples. And I’m like: oh, well!

He has a Mickey Mouse, but smoking. Because, as I told you before, he smoked, and he even did ridiculous things like that—because to me they’re ridiculous.

 He has an all-black mask. I didn’t see the point of that tattoo either. He has another… another thing there, like an ugly doll that has big eyes. It looks like a toad. He has that too, also smoking.

 [Nadia]: It’s not a toad. It’s E.T., from the movie… smoking a joint.

 Mari is not her real name. She’s also Venezuelan and arrived in the US along with Mikael in November 2023. Shortly after, they applied for asylum, which is legal—but that seems to matter less and less in the United States.

 Mari and Mikael are that kind of couple who wear clothes of the same color or with the same pattern. It was her idea, but she insists he likes it too. She shows me a photo where they both have matching pink shorts, which he chose.

Mikael is a barber. Mari cleans hotel rooms. So they have opposite schedules. She goes to bed early and wakes up early. He wakes up later and goes to bed later. When their schedules coincide, they’re usually so tired that they stay home, lying down, watching TV with a pink, fluffy blanket.

 The morning when it all happened, Mari was getting ready to leave early, as usual… She was with another girl who lived with Mikael and her.

 As soon as they went out, they saw several men outside. They were all dressed in black. One of them spoke Spanish.

 [Mari]: And the men in black shirts show me a photo and tell me: we’re looking for this person who gave us this address. They asked if we knew them. Honestly, we didn’t know who the person was. It was a dark-skinned person, dark hair, big eyes, and bearded. We honestly didn’t know who it was. And they tell us he was Dominican. They tell us they’re going to search the house to verify that it’s true, that it’s not that person who lived here.

 [Nadia]: Mari didn’t see any problem letting them in. After all, they weren’t hiding anything, they hadn’t committed any crime. What’s more… She and Mikael had already applied for asylum, and he had already had his first court hearing; the next one was soon. They had no reason to be in danger.

 She opened the gate and guided them up some narrow gray stairs to their apartment in the basement. Mikael was still sleeping.

 [Mari]: They came down. Obviously I went in first because I was going to wake him up so he could get up, because they’re going to look for someone. He was asleep. Half asleep, he asked me what was going on.

 [Nadia]: He sat up in bed, still naked.

 [Mari]: They dressed him. They got him clothes. They themselves got him the clothes.

 [Nadia]: Mari passed him a towel.

 [Mari]: I tell him: Boy, put on the towel quickly, because the police are coming. They came in, pushed the door, handcuffed me, handcuffed him, and he immediately asked what was going on, why were they handcuffing us. They didn’t tell us anything.

 [Nadia]: Mari started crying. Mikael too.

 [Mari]: He, right away, started crying. He told me: Girl, calm down. He said to them: What’s going on? Why are you handcuffing us? Why are you handcuffing us? They said nothing. They just told him: Stay calm because things can get worse. They wouldn’t let him move. They pushed him.

 They didn’t tell us anything. They didn’t ask us our names, nothing.

 They dressed him, got him clothes—they themselves got him the clothes. They started asking if there were weapons here. They searched the whole house and left. They took him away.

 [Nadia]: They told them they were going to take him to Federal Plaza, an ICE office in Manhattan—Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The men were maybe from ICE or perhaps police working with ICE and the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. We don’t know for certain, because they didn’t answer any of my questions.

They said they needed to interrogate him.

[Mari]: We thought: Okay, they’re interrogating him, and in the afternoon he’ll be back. But no. Four, five, six in the afternoon came and nothing. Then someone calls, but it wasn’t him. It was someone else who was next to him. He tells me that his cell phone had been confiscated, and that he had been arrested. I ask him: What do you mean arrested? You haven’t committed any crime. And nothing—they wouldn’t tell us what was happening.

[Nadia]: They took him to Bergen County Jail in New Jersey.

Mari started calling lawyers. But their situation was complicated. Their asylum hearing hadn’t happened yet, and even though Mikael hadn’t been convicted of any crime, the U.S. government was holding him in jail. It took her four weeks to find a lawyer willing to take his case. The lawyer told her Mikael was accused of having entered the country illegally—something that could be proven false with proof of their asylum application, but that would take time and money.

Besides legal fees, Mari started spending money on essentials for Mikael: food, toiletries, and calls that cost her five dollars per minute.

[Mari]: I had sent him $500 in those two months, or a little more. We were always talking. He could only communicate with me. He told me he was fine, that he was calm, that he wasn’t in any danger, that nothing was happening to him.

[Nadia]: While they prepared documents for his defense, something unexpected happened. One day, at the end of January, Mikael wasn’t at his normal number.

[Mari]: And suddenly a lady calls me and tells me: Ma’am, I’m calling you from Bergen to let you know that Mikael is no longer here. I say: What do you mean he’s no longer there? Where is he? And she tells me: We don’t know.

[Nadia]: Mari was desperate. Mikael had simply disappeared. She didn’t know where he was. She couldn’t talk to him. She didn’t know what was happening. A month went by. And another. She tried everything: she called the jail several times, she called ICE. No one would tell her anything. ICE told her to try calling after ten days. But when she called back, nothing. They even told her to check the morgue.

In April, almost two months after Mikael disappeared, she got an unexpected call.

[Mari]: And someone calls me and tells me: Ma’am, I’m calling you because you’ve been calling to find out about Mikael. He’s not in the United States anymore. I ask: What do you mean he’s not in the United States anymore? And he tells me: We deported him. He’s in El Salvador.

[Nadia]: Mari couldn’t believe it. Mikael was Venezuelan. Why would they send him to El Salvador? The man couldn’t answer her—or didn’t want to. Before he hung up, he told her they should expect a call from Mikael.

Nothing. No call. It had been months since they’d had any contact, and now she just knew Mikael was in a country that wasn’t his, on the other side of the continent, in circumstances she could only imagine. She felt helpless. Meanwhile, the lawyer kept telling her: I’m looking for him, I’m looking for him. Until, after several weeks, Mikael appeared in the lawyer’s system. He had been officially deported to El Salvador.

 We’ll be right back.

 [Midroll]

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón.

Before the break, we heard how Mikael was detained at his home in New York by ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After spending time in jail in the United States, he was sent to El Salvador. We don’t know exactly how he got there or why. But we do know where they kept him: in CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center.

CECOT was built by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. It’s a maximum-security prison famous for housing gang members captured during Bukele’s war against gangs. In 2025, El Salvador signed an agreement with the United States to receive deportees from the country. In addition to its own citizens, El Salvador would take in people from other Central American countries and from the Caribbean.

But Mikael is Venezuelan. So it’s not clear why he ended up there.

Here’s Nadia again.

[Nadia]: When I talked to Mikael to do this interview, I asked him if he could tell me what had happened between the last time he talked to Mari from jail and the day he was deported.

[Mikael]: One night—I don’t remember what day it was—they took us out of the cell, a large group of people. And they put us on a bus. They told us that whoever spoke would be left behind and wouldn’t get to travel. Everyone had to stay quiet and couldn’t say anything or communicate with anyone. And they put us on a plane, and we traveled for about three or four hours. 

[Nadia]: Mikael was handcuffed and shackled. During the flight, immigration officers watched them closely. He didn’t know where they were going. He says all he could think about was his mother, his family, and Mari. 

When the plane landed, he realized he wasn’t in Venezuela. 

[Mikael]: I realized I was in El Salvador, at a military air base. They took us off in a line to a plane hangar. They sat us on the floor—literally one person next to another, sitting on the floor, handcuffed and shackled. They strip-searched us. They took everything from us, absolutely everything. 

[Nadia]: Mikael says at one point during that search, they put a bag over their heads and made them walk. They had their eyes covered and couldn’t see anything. They were all afraid. They put them in a van.

[Mikael]: And they started hitting the van, hitting the back of the van hard, shouting and screaming at us, telling us we’d never leave there, that we’d die there.

[Nadia]: Then they took the bags off their heads and made them get out of the van one by one to take mug shots.

[Mikael]: And when we got off the van and took off the bag, all you could see were soldiers with rifles—with rifles, with shotguns—pointing at us, telling us what position to stand in for the photo. And then they put us back in the van and took us to the detention center.

[Nadia]: CECOT. When they got there, they gave them a uniform: white shorts, a white T-shirt, and sandals. They shaved their heads and assigned them to cells, where they would spend most of their time. 

[Mikael]: Inside the cell there was nothing. There was just a metal bed, and that’s it. They assigned you where you were going to sleep. Each person on their own cot. There were no mattresses, there were no pillows, there was nothing. It was an empty bed.

[Nadia]: This is a description from Human Rights Watch of what conditions are like at CECOT.

[Voiceover]: Detainees sleep on metal beds without mattresses. The cells have no windows and are lit only by dim blue lights. Detained people Human Rights Watch interviewed reported severe overcrowding in their cells, with up to 120 people sharing a space designed for far fewer.

[Nadia]: The report also documents severe beatings from guards. Mikael confirms all of this.

[Mikael]: There were about 80 people in the cell. Eighty people who literally didn’t all fit on the beds. We had to organize ourselves because 20 or 30 people ended up sleeping on the floor—on the cold metal floor. And the shifts rotated every day. One day you slept in the bed, the next on the floor, and so on.

[Nadia]: They couldn’t see sunlight. They couldn’t go outside. They had no communication with anyone.

[Mikael]: You couldn’t call, you couldn’t write letters, you couldn’t do anything. Isolated from the world, isolated from everyone.

[Nadia]: Part of the reason the guards behaved so violently was because many thought the people detained there had been members of the MS-13 or Barrio 18 gangs. Those gangs were responsible for terrorizing the population in El Salvador for years. Terrible crimes. The war against gangs that President Bukele declared was very popular, and the country’s crime rate did drop. But getting to that point involved massive human rights violations documented by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. 

With the new deal between the United States and El Salvador, CECOT started receiving deportees who had nothing to do with the gangs. But many guards didn’t know—or didn’t believe—that not everyone there was a gang member. 

[Mikael]: And as I kept telling them—no, I’m not a gang member, I wasn’t with MS or Barrio 18, I’m Venezuelan, I haven’t committed any crime—they’d get more upset. They’d put the baton to my neck, put the gun to my head. They’d make us kneel, make us get naked in front of everyone. And the beatings… If someone dared to look at them, they’d beat them.

[Nadia]: Around the time Mikael was there, a video was leaked of guards at CECOT beating inmates. In the video, you can see multiple guards attacking one person. The government initially denied these events had occurred, but days later they said they would open an investigation.

For Mikael, this violence was part of everyday life.

[Mikael]: You’re afraid because literally sometimes, supposedly, you did something they didn’t like and—bang—they take you out to beat you up. They beat you there in front of everyone, but they also took you to another place to beat you harder.

[Nadia]: Mikael also tells me that some people there seemed to have been in CECOT for a long time. They looked extremely thin. And he realized he was losing weight too. 

[Mikael]: I thought a lot about my family. I thought a lot about the injustice that had happened to me. Because life was unfair. Why is this happening to me when there are so many bad people on the street? And I, who am literally a good person, am here. That’s what I thought about most at night especially. And, well, I prayed a lot to God for my family, for me, for my girlfriend, for all the people I care about.

[Nadia]: Days turned into weeks. They never gave them information about how long they would keep them there or what they could do to communicate with their loved ones.

[Mikael]: The only thing they told us was that we would never get out of there and that our country didn’t want us—that because our country didn’t want us, we were there.

[Nadia]: The food was difficult. For breakfast, they gave them oatmeal and sometimes a cookie. They only ate eggs once a week. Every day, lunch and dinner were rice and beans. To drink, they gave them boiled water from a well they had at CECOT. Mikael always suspected this water wasn’t safe to drink. And it seems he was right.

[Mikael]: We all got stomach aches, vomiting, diarrhea—while the body was getting used to all those bad things.

[Nadia]: Part of daily life was supporting each other among cellmates.

[Mikael]: We gave each other strength, and we gave each other positivity. We prayed a lot. We asked God together. We knelt down together. We said prayers. We said prayers every night, and that kind of recharged us with positivity, recharged us with faith so that we didn’t let ourselves completely collapse.

[Nadia]: It was a daily struggle. If their cell’s water tank ran out, it took two or three days to fill it again. They couldn’t even shower or brush their teeth. The bathrooms had a hole in the floor. And punishments when someone broke the rules weren’t just beatings. For example, they’d take away hygiene items: toothpaste, soap… It happened once in his cell. For playing dice—dice they had built themselves.

[Mikael]: And since they realized we were making games to distract ourselves with toilet paper and toothpaste, they suspended it for a whole month so we couldn’t do anything and so we wouldn’t have hygiene.

[Nadia]: They went a month without soap to shower and without toothpaste to brush their teeth… A month without toilet paper.

[Mikael]: A month like an animal. Disgusting. I felt disgusting every day. I couldn’t stand myself. It was already ugly where we were. And that made the environment even worse. Because the prisoners, the detainees, however you want to call them—they were in bad moods.

[Nadia]: In that difficult environment, weeks turned into months. Four, to be precise. They never knew anything about the outside world.

 And one day, out of nowhere, at 3 in the morning, they turned on all the lights.

 [Mikael]: Journalists and photographers arrived, and they ordered us to undress. Everyone come out in boxers, cell by cell, in a line, cell by cell.

[Nadia]: They gave them folded clothes. They got dressed, and they put them on buses. Some thought they were going back to the United States, others to Venezuela, others thought they were going to another prison in El Salvador.

Already on the bus, Mikael remembers that a Venezuelan man got on. He was from his country’s government.

[Mikael]: And he told us we could now thank God, that we were going to get out of this, that we were going to our country. That we should just hold on and not do anything wrong, because the minimum—the minimum mistake, the minimum negative thing they saw—they could make it so we wouldn’t travel.

[Nadia]: An immense relief was felt on that bus where Mikael was.

[Mikael]: It literally wasn’t expected at all. It was very… It was very surprising. And, well, it was a journey full of emotions. In that time, on that plane, all of us who were on those planes had our feelings running high because we all saw it—all the bad we had gone through. Another because we already wanted to be in our country. Another because we wanted freedom. Some were happy, others were sad, but it was a rain of emotions—that day when we were on the plane.

[Nadia]: When they arrived at the airport in Venezuela, there were already family members of many of the people who had been detained. The government had already notified them. Mikael was told they thought they’d arrive worse than they looked. But he believes a large part of the people felt strong… 

[Mikael]: Despite the fact that we came from hell, we came smiling, we came celebrating, we came happy—but that’s part of being Venezuelan.

[Nadia]: One of the first things he did in Venezuela was call Mari. After four months without communication. Something Mikael always had in his head was her phone number. He memorized it. 

[Mikael]: The desire and desperation to call her were so great that I paid 20 dollars for five minutes of a call. But it was totally worth it because as soon as I called her, I saw the joy in her eyes. I saw the joy on her face. I saw the sadness. Like—what the fuck! Finally! That’s it. This is over. 

[Nadia]: When we spoke with him, Mikael had been back in his country for three months. Today he feels happy, grateful to have recovered a life that during those dark months in CECOT he thought was lost forever. But the first days were hard.

[Mikael]: I felt very self-conscious—self-conscious about talking, self-conscious about going out. I felt like I still couldn’t process everything I had lived through and the reality of where I was now, that I was now free. Even so, being free now, I couldn’t push aside the bad I had lived through. 

[Nadia]: Over time, he’s been trying to close the chapter and look to the future. 

[Mikael]: I have the opportunity to keep moving forward anywhere. Today I have the freedom to decide if I go to another country, if I stay, if I do anything with my life—because I’m free. 

[Nadia]: With Mari, there are already plans. She’s going to buy the plane ticket back to Venezuela soon. She won’t return to the United States. She prefers to be in Venezuela, with Mikael. They hope to spend Christmas together. 

[Mikael]: Happy and anxious. Literally. The only piece I’m missing to be able to recover my life is her, because she’s part of it. And soon. 

[Nadia]: Then, everything will be fine.  

[Daniel]: A partial version of this story was published in English on the podcast This American Life. It’s titled Solving for Where. In the episode notes, you can find a link to the episode. 

Nadia Reiman is an editor for This American Life and lives in New York. This story was edited by Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, and by me. Mariana Zúñiga, producer at El Hilo, reported from Venezuela. Marisa Robertson Textor and Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design is by Andrés Azpiri with original music by Rémy Lozano, Ana Tuirán, and Andrés. 

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Samatha Proaño, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Lina Rincón, Natalia Ramírez, David Trujillo, and Elsa Liliana Ulloa.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO. 

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed in Hindenburg PRO. 

If you liked this episode and want us to keep doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us keep telling the region’s stories. 

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thank you for listening.