ProPublica’s Gerardo del Valle, alongside Alejandro Bonilla Suárez and Edwin Corona Ramos, were named winners of the 2026 Livingston Award for excellence in international reporting for “Taken to CECOT,” a package comprising the two documentaries “Nightmare at CECOT” and “Surviving CECOT,” made with The Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News.
The short films, produced by ProPublica’s Gerardo del Valle with reporting by Perla Trevizo, Mica Rosenberg, Melissa Sanchez, Gabriel Sandoval, Ronna Rísquez and Adrián González, tell the story of three Venezuelan men — Juan José Ramos Ramos, Andry Blanco Bonilla and Wilmer Vega Sandia — who were branded by the U.S. government as Tren de Aragua gang members and deported by the Trump administration to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. All three men said they had no connection to Tren de Aragua and were not gang members, and in U.S. government data ProPublica obtained, none were flagged as having a criminal conviction or pending charges. The films also have Spanish-language versions, “La pesadilla en el CECOT” and “Sobreviviendo al CECOT,” and a broadcast version that aired on the PBS investigative documentary series “FRONTLINE” later in the year.
Livingston Award judge Kara Swisher commented, “Well before recent reporting on the government targeting and deporting people with no criminal records, this team of reporters exposed the practice where simple immigration violations resulted in horrific torture at the CECOT facility in El Salvador. The investigation found that more than half of the 238 deportees were labeled as having no criminal record in the U.S., and only six had violent convictions. Nearly half were deported in the middle of their immigration cases. ‘Taken to CECOT’ is the story of our age right now, of carelessness combined with cruelty, where the demonization of the immigrant results in a nightmare for justice too.”
