Arturo Suarez Trejo The Venezuelan Musician Who Was Detained at CECOT

Raleigh, North Carolina — When Arturo Suárez Trejo, known as SuarezVzla, arrived in the United States, he had one goal: to build a stable life and pursue his music career. A Venezuelan singer-songwriter who had spent years performing and mentoring emerging reggaetón and urbano artists, Suárez seemed to be living the immigrant dream. He obtained a Social Security number, worked honest jobs as a handyman, and dreamed of recording his next song.

But on February 8, 2025, everything changed. While filming a music video in Raleigh, Suárez was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). With no criminal record and a life deeply rooted in lawful work, he was stunned to be swept into a mass detention and deportation operation targeting Venezuelans.

Instead of being sent back to his home country, Suárez was deported to El Salvador, where he was interned at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) — a sprawling prison designed for terrorism suspects. Conditions were nightmarish. In a seven-by-four-meter cell, up to 19 detainees were forced to sleep on metal bunks, without mattresses, sheets, or pillows. Water, food, and bathing facilities were minimal, and detainees endured beatings and verbal abuse from guards.

“We thought the world had forgotten about us,” Suárez later said, recalling the despair of confinement. “Migrants are not terrorists. We’re human beings fleeing crisis, chasing dreams.”

Inside CECOT, Suárez turned to music as a form of resistance. Using soap on his bunk, he wrote lyrics that became an anthem among fellow detainees: “Let nothing kill your faith… soon you will return home.” The simple act of singing in the cell became a small yet powerful assertion of humanity amid dehumanization.

After 125 days in detention, Suárez and many others were released on July 18, 2025, following a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Venezuela. He was flown back to Caracas, reunited with family, and began the difficult process of rebuilding his life.

Suárez’s story is more than the tale of one musician’s detention — it is emblematic of a broader system that criminalizes migrants. Under current U.S. and allied regional immigration strategies, nationality, tattoos, or cultural markers can become pretexts for detention, even when individuals have legal status, employment, or no criminal history. Advocacy groups and human rights organizations have condemned such deportations as arbitrary and abusive.

For the Latin music and migrant communities, Suárez’s ordeal underscores a stark reality: the path to opportunity in the United States is increasingly fraught with peril, and even lawful migrants are vulnerable to systemic injustice.

Yet despite the trauma, Suárez’s voice remains resolute. Through his songs, interviews, and public testimony before international organizations, he insists that the story of migrants like him be told. “We survived,” he said. “Now, the world must remember us — and change the systems that allowed this to happen.”

Suárez’s return to Venezuela is a reminder of the resilience of migrants and artists alike, and a call to global attention on the human cost of immigration enforcement policies. In every note he sings and every lyric he writes, he transforms his pain into a plea for justice, dignity, and recognition.