Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdown Venezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism pris…

Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdown Venezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there. A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans’ civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador. CSI and GlobalX “went to great lengths” to undertake the “rendition flights” to El Salvador, “in concert with the US government, in flagrant violation of US and international law”, the lawsuit reads. Last year, in March, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men held in US immigration custody to El Salvador, where they were detained for four months in a maximum security terrorism prison and tortured. The lawsuit accuses CSI and GlobalX of deliberately transporting the men to El Salvador, despite a federal judge ordering the flights to return and despite knowing they would probably be tortured inside the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center (known as “Cecot” by its acronym in Spanish). Without CSI and GlobalX’s complicity, “neither Plaintiffs nor the Class would have been rendered to CECOT”, the lawsuit reads. The suit was filed by a team of human rights attorneys on 17 July and is being reported first by the Guardian. It is one of the latest attempts by rights groups to hold private contractors accountable for their role in alleged abuses stemming from the administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown.