Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador.

The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an infamous megaprison known for human rights abuses that is completely cut off from the outside world.