NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — In a FOX 17 News exclusive interview, we take you inside the Terrorism Confinement Center. It's El Salvador’s maximum security prison, and it houses some of the world’s most dangerous gang members.

It’s where three United States Homeland Security planes touched down in March, carrying 261 deported migrants.

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia was on one of those planes. He’s now suing the Trump administration, claiming he was tortured and abused.

Philip Holsinger is a Nashville-based freelance journalist. He was on assignment for TIME Magazine and was there documenting their arrival. He has graciously shared his work and his experiences with us.

When you look at these pictures, you can quickly see they tell a story. These images bridge the gap when words can’t quite articulate.

It’s the work of award-winning journalist Philip Holsinger, and he's getting dangerously close to some of the world’s most notorious criminals and gang members. While on the tarmac in El Salvador, an ICE agent told Philip to be careful after some of the Venezuelans just tried hijacking the plane. upon landing.

"You can read their body like a book; rape, murder, dismemberment. It’s all written onto their bodies. Dates, everything—it’s crazy," recalls Philip.

Sometimes force is used to keep order; guns are drawn, and the migrants are filed off the planes and hauled onto buses headed for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, El Salvador’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center.

"Their eyes are wicked—these men—and that’s where I have mixed feelings about the harshness of the treatment. (On one hand) How can you treat a person like this any other way than to cage them like an animal with no amenities? Then there’s another part of me that says people are people and you have to have some threshold of morality even when you’re dealing with monsters," says Holsinger.

The Trump administration accuses Kilmar Abrego-Garcia of being an MS13 gang member, although this is in dispute. What isn’t in dispute is this: He is the subject of Tennessee’s high-profile landmark immigration case. A Nashville federal grand jury indicted Garcia, charging him with two felony charges of human smuggling.

Garcia arrived at CECOT the same day Holsinger was there, documenting the intake process.

According to the journalist, inmates arrived, and many of them were sporting designer clothes. They were booked, processed, stripped naked, and given a uniform. Guards shaved their heads and forced 80 men into a cell. No books. No talking. No phone calls. No visitors.

They slept on steel plank bunks. No mats, no sheets, no pillows. Sometimes they were forced to kneel, shackled with their faces to the ground.

Philip, like a fly on the wall, has been trying to make sense of what he saw. On one hand, America is safer now that these dangerous criminals and murderers have been deported, locked up, and treated accordingly.

"Knowing what I know about the gangs, they belong in jail for the rest of their lives. I don’t know that you can reform a serial killer".

However, he finds himself contemplating due process with some of the migrants moving through the line.

"There were outliers that night when the Venezuelans came off the plane, and the biggest outliers were that some of these people were scared to death".

Kilmar Abrego-Garcia claims to be one of them. The immigrant was living in the U.S. illegally and found himself mistakenly deported to CECOT. Abrego-Garcia eventually returned to Tennessee to stand trial. His lawyers are now claiming prison guards beat and tortured him during his time in prison.

"The biggest concern he had was not so much the physical beatings, the malnutrition; it was the psychological torture of the guards telling him we’re going to throw you into the general population—with all those gang members—and they’re going to tear you limb from limb. That’s really what affected him the most," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego-Garcia's attorney. He claims Abrego-Garcia soiled himself because he wasn’t given access to the restroom.

How illegal immigration should be handled has deeply divided the country. What personal rights do these deportees have, some violent gang members, and where do you draw the line when it comes to keeping America safe?

"I’m not saying this as a political statement, but when I look back at my own country, and whether you like President Trump or not, it’s a man saying I’m going to go all the way with this. I’m going to push the limits. If you’re a criminal, you’re not going to be here. You’re going to go to jail-- or you’re going to be sent back home to your own country.”

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