Lost in the ‘Death Realm’ of El Salvador’s Prisons

José Alfredo Vega’s parents said they were able to identify his body only because of a childhood scar. “He was OK when he left,” said his father, Miguel Ángel Vega, recalling the night nearly three years ago when police officers barged into the family’s home and took away his son. “He was healthy.”Now, at 29, José Alfredo was dead in a morgue. President Trump’s decision to send to El Salvador hundreds of people he says are gang members has ignited outrage and approval in the United States. Here in El Salvador, where tens of thousands of men have been swept up in mass arrests in recent years, the disappearance of men into prisons not to be heard from again is disturbingly familiar.