Student Investigations Lab Project
Students and staff from the Investigations Lab contributed to the Human Rights Watch report “You Have Arrived in Hell,” which documents arbitrary detention, torture, and inhumane conditions experienced by Venezuelan migrants who were forcibly deported from the United States and held in El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison. Our team used geolocation, image analysis, and other verification methods to confirm detention conditions, identify security units, assess the facility’s internal layout, and document the weapons and munitions used against detainees. This work corroborated what the deportees reported in detailed testimonies to Human Rights Watch.
Following HRW’s briefings to U.S. congressional representatives, which included testimony from one of the victims, members of Congress sent a letter to the Trump administration urging an investigation into abuses detailed in the report. They highlighted the administration’s failure to comply with the principle of non-refoulement (which prohibits the return of migrants to home countries where they may face serious harm), raised transparency concerns about the $4.7 million transferred to Salvadoran security agencies, and pressed the U.S. government for public accountability.
Explore the Report
Partners
CBS 60 Minutes reached out to our team after the report’s release to interview our students about their investigation for a larger piece on the Venezuelan detainees and the Trump Administration’s deportation practices. CBS pulled the segment just hours before broadcast, an unusual last-minute switch. The change in airing came after Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss requested numerous changes to the segment and explicitly stated that the piece needed “additional reporting,” despite the segment having already cleared CBS’s editorial standards and legal review. Weiss went so far as to call out our students in a leaked email, noting: “The analysis from the Berkeley students is strange…what does the analysis add?”
Despite the delay in the United States, the piece ran later that night in Canada. Although the segment was quickly removed from the internet, multiple people had grabbed the now-controversial video and began sharing it across social media — leading it to allegedly become the most-viewed 60 minutes segment to date. For weeks, CBS continued to delay airing of the piece in the United States. Finally, on January 18, 2026 — without any publicity or notice to our team — the piece ran on 60 Minutes — caveated with a new intro and outro, and scheduled against a Superbowl playoff game during a holiday weekend, strongly suggesting an intent on the part of CBS leadership to lessen viewership following the earlier media frenzy.
Team Acknowledgements
Investigative Leads: Maneh Davityan, Talia Harter
Staff Advisors: Alexa Koenig, Guillén Torres
Student Contributors: Nick D’Acri, Audrey Colocho, Emewodesh Eshete, Ana Gonzalez, Beck Klein, Daniella Spero, Kyle Sweasey
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