In March of this year, despite a judge’s order and public outcry, more than 230 Venezuelan men were deported by the Trump administration to a violent maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. In late July, those men were suddenly released — with no explanation or apology for their brutal treatment. Now, in a collaboration between ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News, we can finally find out who these men are and what they endured. According to the accounts featured in “Now That They’re Free,” published last week, the experience was every bit as nightmarish as their families, friends and advocates feared it would be.

internal data showing the Trump administration knew that at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. — and that only six had been convicted of violent offenses. We identified fewer than a dozen additional convictions, both for crimes committed in the U.S. and abroad, that were not reflected in the government data.

Although these men are no longer incarcerated in a foreign prison, the Trump administration is expanding its own detention network through slapdash facilities in Texas, Florida and elsewhere, and in office buildings and basements in cities around the country. The fight to get some insight into what is happening inside places like the detention camp in southern Florida swampland is still ongoing.