Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Goalie Who Went to Hell and Back About this episode America disappeared an innocent man into a terrorist prison, for his Real Madrid tattoo. This is his story of survival — and resistance — from correspondent Paola Ramos.
• Previously on PTFO: The Goalie Who Disappeared https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyZTFhNWEtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtODdkYzhlNjIyY2Vj
• Read "Defectors" https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741645/defectors-by-paola-ramos/ by Paola Ramos
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:08 Speaker 01 Is this what you lived? Is this torture?
0:13 Speaker 02 Sí.
0:15 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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2:22 Pablo Torre? It is just like hard to look at the news and be like, is this gonna end well?
2:30 Pablo Torre? Can we get a happy ending? The last time you were here, we ended with a bit of a brutal takeaway, in which there was no guarantee that there was gonna be a happy ending. Thank you, Paolo Ramos, for being back with us.
2:44 Speaker 01 Always. You bring me for the sad stories.
2:46 Pablo Torre? Well, well, this is the key part. You are not only our translator and reporter and expert on this story, having devoted so much of your life to the question of immigration and now this administration and Latin America. You're also somebody who brought to us, the last time, a prayer.
3:12 Speaker 01 This is the youth soccer team from Matigas. Matigas is a small town in northwest Venezuela. It's right by the Venezuelan and Colombian border. And these are kids that are part of the youth soccer team. And they're under 12 years old. And they're part of this club called Perijanero, Perijanero Soccer Club.
3:35 Speaker 01 Number one, they're saying, "Guide him, wherever he is. Help free him, liberate him, so he's free."
3:43 Pablo Torre? And the "him" in question is their coach, who's also himself a soccer player, which is why I believe you call this, very appropriately, "The goalie's prayer."
3:56 Speaker 01 This goalie that they're talking about is a pretty famous soccer player from Venezuela. He's from Primera División, the first division, in a pretty notorious jugador de fútbol in Venezuela.
4:07 Pablo Torre? And when you say "liberate him", I mean, this brings us to the title of the last episode, "The goalie who disappeared."
4:14 Speaker 01 This goalie left Venezuela a couple of years ago. To leave the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela.
4:19 Speaker 05 The show of force and soaring tensions have Venezuela on edge. Its government have been holding military drills as President Nicolas Maduro issued this message in English.
4:30 Speaker 02 Not war, not war, not war. Just peace, just peace, just peace forever, forever, forever.
4:39 Speaker 01 Nicolas Maduro is seen as a dictator.
4:42 Speaker 06 The UN Human Rights Council accused Venezuela of crimes against humanity, including torturing dissidents, sexual violence, and arbitrary killings. Mr. Maduro did not mention this in his speech.
4:54 Speaker 01 Venezuela is a place that has been full of political turmoil. Very violent place. Over 8 million people have left the country since 2015. And this goalie is part of that trend.
5:15 Speaker 01 And so this goalie did what many of them did, which was, look at the American dream, and he went north. He went north believing that he had a chance at entering this country and at chasing that dream.
5:24 Pablo Torre? And if you were to just look at this geopolitically, from the big picture sense, that did sort of add up. Like Donald Trump's nemesis, actually, his latest nemesis in this current news cycle, the one not named Jeffrey Epstein, is Nicolas Maduro.
5:37 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. Maduro offered everything in his country, all the natural resources. He even recorded a message to you in English recently, offering mediation.
5:48 Pablo Torre? He's offered everything, you're right. You know why? Because he doesn't want to [bleep] around with the United States. Thank you, everybody.
5:58 Pablo Torre? And so, the goalie in question, the coach in question, who winds up disappearing, where did he get to in terms of the United States itself?
6:05 Speaker 01 He makes it to the southern border. He actually crosses legally, right? He goes through the whole process.
6:10 Pablo Torre? Yes.
6:11 Speaker 01 And like many of them do, through this legal process, he ends up at an ICE detention center in California. And then he ends up going through a process that has become very familiar under the Trump administration, which is they are sent to different detention centers across the country. From California, he goes to Texas. And then suddenly, March 16th, 2025, no one knows where this soccer player is. He has disappeared.
6:40 Speaker 01 Family doesn't know where he is in Venezuela. His own lawyer doesn't know where he is. He is, he himself doesn't know where he's going.
6:46 Pablo Torre? His sister, just like her, the tape we have from her in the last episode we did.
6:50 Speaker 01 She's amazing.
6:51 Pablo Torre? Is heartbreaking.
6:53 Speaker 01 "I love you," Jerse says back to his daughter. "I love you too." And then he says, "I don't have much time to talk."
7:06 Pablo Torre? Just so people understand, this is a guy with two daughters, with family members that he had to leave behind. No criminal record, in case anyone was wondering. This is a character that, from a sports angle and from just a human rights angle, is somebody that we wanted to really invest our time into understanding.
7:25 Speaker 01 He is one of those Venezuelans that ends up in this terrorist prison center.
7:31 Speaker 03 This notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
7:35 Speaker 01 Which I think now millions of people know this name, no? Secot.
7:39 Speaker 03 Secot was built in 2023. It's got metal bunks, no sheets, no pillows, mattresses. It's got open toilets.
7:48 Speaker 01 This goalie, this soccer player, ends up there, in this place that has a nickname, actually.
7:53 Pablo Torre? The nickname is just to spell it out.
7:56 Speaker 01 It's hell, El Infierno. No one knows what happens inside that place. It's a place where they typically place criminals.
8:06 Speaker 03 They're cut out off from the outside world. There are reports of just dismal, horrific conditions, torture, and death. Our own US State Department described these conditions as life-threatening.
8:21 Pablo Torre? So our goalie disappears, only to wind up in hell. And his name?
8:29 Speaker 01 His name is Jerse Reyes. We started off with bad news, but there is good news, after all, Pablo. Jerse went to hell, he went to El Infierno, but he's back, and we actually found him.
9:01 Pablo Torre? So I just need to clarify that we have been working on this episode basically since May. Ever since we published that initial investigation into what really happened to a professional soccer goalie and youth soccer coach named Jairce Reyes, and how Jairce's Real Madrid tattoo, which we'll explain in a minute here, got him disappeared by the US government. But just to be extraordinarily clear, Jairce is a completely innocent man who had been imprisoned in his home country of Venezuela for protesting their autocratic president, Nicolas Maduro. And then Jairce got imprisoned in a Salvadoran prison camp by us, the United States.
9:46 Pablo Torre? You know, the country where Jairce was legally seeking asylum. But you should also know that when we started reporting this story, we had zero idea that President Trump would also be threatening war against Venezuela this month, and that a bipartisan group of lawmakers would be simultaneously questioning his Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, about whether the second strike of an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela this fall constituted a war crime. But what I did presume was that FIFA, soccer's global governing body, would award its first-ever "peace prize"
10:27 Pablo Torre? to Donald Trump last week in Washington DC, with various Real Madrid stars watching at the 2026 World Cup draw.
10:39 Speaker 02 Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
10:52 Pablo Torre? All of which is to say that as we now assess this layer cake of sports and human rights abuses and outright political corruption, it does seem clear that Jairce Reyes is absolutely the story that we needed to finish reporting for you this week.
11:14 Pablo Torre? And the reason we can establish that is because in July, you, Paula, and we here at Pablo Torre finds out, actually, we helped break the news of a prisoner swap. And our world lead, good news. The Trump administration has successfully completed a large-scale prisoner swap with Venezuela, securing the release of 10 Americans that the Trump administration says were being wrongfully detained in Venezuela. This involves hundreds of prisoners, including Venezuelans deported from the US, who were being held in El Salvador. How did you find out that Jerse was actually part of Donald Trump's big deal, this big trade that he made, such that our goalie would be among the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador?
11:57 Speaker 01 We had heard rumors that there was going to be this prisoner swap, that people were sort of in the midst of flying towards Venezuela. Through that, Jerse's own lawyer confirmed that he was part of that. Jerse's own sister, Yorrelis, had also heard rumors from the ground. But again, none of this was confirmed. And I think because everything was such a nightmare, because those three months have been completely marked by uncertainty.
12:25 Speaker 01 His sister believed that he was part of that plane. But like she told me, she could not believe it until she saw her brother in real flesh standing in front of her.
12:35 Pablo Torre? And so this brings us to just last month, when you had just gotten back from the southern border of the United States on a reporting trip. And you get on Zoom for us.
12:50 Pablo Torre? And there you are finally, seeing the face of this guy we've been talking about and reporting on.
13:01 Speaker 01 We've been talking about this goalie, this soccer player, for months at this point. And Jerse is back in Machicas, where he's from. He was in his home. He feels good. But you can tell that this is someone that has gone through a lot of trauma.
13:19 Speaker 01 He told me himself that he has had to see a psychologist, that it has been difficult. Almost that people have stopped asking him about how he's doing. But what was interesting is that Jerse wanted to talk. It's almost like he wanted to relive this whole nightmare.
13:36 Pablo Torre? Right, I mean, his family. What is their sort of approach to him? I mean, his mom, his dad, their son is back.
13:45 Speaker 01 That's good and complicated at the same time, right? It's good because they're celebrating his return.
13:53 Speaker 01 His dad has been ill. His dad has always had a problem with his eyes, with his vision. And that is one of the reasons why Jerse actually leaves Venezuela months ago, right? One of the things that drives Jerse to leave his hometown is that he wants to help his father have the medication and the money that he needs to get better. So that's what drives Jerse to leave. He obviously was never able to realize that dream. And so, life is back to normal in Venezuela that is still going through a lot of the same problems that forced him to leave in the first place.
14:22 Pablo Torre? And just the way that the Department of Homeland Security detained him, the reason they stated and went back and forth with us about, it does involve social media? And his social media, just in case people had not scrolled through it, it reminds you of like a corny dad as a corny dad these days, myself?
14:41 Speaker 01 Completely. I mean, if you look at his Instagram, it's literally like countless photos of him playing soccer, doing what he loves, and him being a father, like the cutest father to two young girls.
14:52 Pablo Torre? Right. But what the Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security tells us is, quote, "He has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating TDA gang membership."
15:04 Speaker 01 As you know, TDA stands for "Tren Aragua," this word that has now become Donald Trump's favorite word.
15:14 Pablo Torre? Trendy Aragua. Trendy Aragua. Trendy Aragua. Yes, this brand that has been sold to America to justify so much of what we've been seeing, and by the way, not seeing, just being told about. But the tattoo that the Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security was referencing, the one that got an innocent immigrant to the US abducted, the one that got him sent to hell in El Salvador.
15:40 Speaker 01 He showed it to me. Pues ese es un tatuaje más o menos...
15:44 Pablo Torre? So he's pointing to his left forearm, and he's showing the illustration, the infamous illustration.
15:53 Speaker 01 Exactly, he's showing the crown. Corona encima del circo. He's talking about the soccer ball. He explains once again that for him, soccer is life. Por eso yo le coloco la corona encima del balón. Y para mí, el mejor equipo del mundo es el Real Madrid. And that his favorite team is the Real Madrid.
16:14 Pablo Torre? The dude's a sports fan. He's a fan who played professional soccer himself.
16:19 Speaker 01 He is, and that's not the only tattoo that he has. He has 17 tattoos. He has other sports tattoos. He also has many tattoos about his own family. And I asked him, I said, "Did anyone ever interrogate you in the US and ask you, 'What is that tattoo?'" Right? Like, "Were you ever confronted?" And he said, "Yes." Yo digo que sí, tengo 17. Unos tatuajes relacionados con mi familia y al deporte. So Jerse gets to this detention center in Texas. He's there for three days. And finally, he's interrogated by this US official, an inspector, as he tells me, this inspector. Ahí es donde me interroga un inspector. The inspector basically tells him that one of his tattoos is related to a gang. Que yo tengo unos tatuajes relacionados con una pandilla. Jerse asks him, "Which one?"
17:05 Speaker 01 El de la corona. The one with the crown. This is what el inspector says. And Jerse says... Pero no, esta corona no representa a ninguna pandilla. This does not represent any gang in his country. But then the inspector says what I think has now become the familiar sentence in Trump's America. Pues para nosotros aquí sí. For us here in America, you are a gang member. Nosotros eres un pandillero y un peligro para la sociedad. And he says, "You are un peligro para la sociedad." And what that literally means, Pablo, is that he tells Jerse that he is a danger to society.
17:36 Pablo Torre? I think it's just really important for us to make clear that like the markers of sports fandom ended up being something that stripped an innocent man of his freedom. And that should be relatable to any American. That must and should be scary on some real level. But what did Jair Se then say about what actually happened next?
17:56 Speaker 01 What happens after that interrogation is basically the beginning of the nightmare.
18:03 Speaker 01 Jair Se literally disappears. March 16th, 2025. That day, he is placed in an airplane.
18:14 Speaker 01 Jair Se remembers that he is literally surrounded by ICE, by DEA, FBI. He tells me that there's sort of tear gas. Everything seems kind of violent around him. He asks officers, "Where are we going?" Because again, Jair Se has no idea. The officers tell him, and I'm talking about the US officials, they tell him that he's going to Venezuela.
18:43 Speaker 01 Jair Se tells me that he had this instinct, or he knew in that moment, that actually he wasn't going to go to Venezuela. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he had this, this deep feeling inside him that it wasn't going to be Venezuela. Next thing he knows, he's inside this plane. The plane suddenly stops. They end up doing this layover in Honduras. The plane takes off again. Suddenly, the plane lands in Salvador's International Airport.
19:13 Speaker 01 In that moment, when they land, he holds on to his seatbelt. He grabs his seatbelt because he doesn't want to get off. Why? Cacote. He knows that he is in Nayib Bukele's El Salvador. He knows that Cacote is not too far away from where they are, and he knows what awaits.
19:32 Pablo Torre? Watching the news from my vantage point, it was very clear that Nayib Bukele was the world's coolest dictator, as he had in his Twitter bio at one point. This guy Bukele is now Trump's closest buddy. And Bukele deliberately was like trying to go viral on the internet. There was a series of videos, but there was just one of them that I remember because of its like action movie style soundtrack.
20:06 Pablo Torre? I mean, you're seeing, again, these these uniformed military officers, vaguely police, also soldiers, just escorting men with their heads down in chains, off of these airplanes.
20:20 Speaker 01 What happens to Jerse after they land is literally a version of that video. The moment he lands, literally, the guards tell him "Y me dicen bienvenidos al Salvador y vuelta" Which literally means, "Welcome to El Salvador, you son of a [bleep] "
20:36 Pablo Torre? Jerse's family, I want to always swing the camera back to them, because they didn't know where he was at all. They also saw this footage on the news. The same footage released by Bukele and the Salvadoran government. What you're getting is this footage of these guys being shaved, they're on their hands and knees, they're all now dressed identically, these white t-shirts, their hands are behind their head, and Jerse's family is just poring over this footage.
21:03 Speaker 01 One of the ways in which Jerse's family is able to confirm that he was in fact part of that group of Venezuelans that were abducted and disappeared and now taken to Segovia is because they zoom into some of those images that Nayib Bukele is releasing. They first kind of see this guy that has a Michael Jordan tattoo.
21:24 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the Jumpman logo, the Air Jordan logo that is all over, you know, all the sneakers you see in the NBA, but also one PowerPoint slide released by the Texas governor's office, which identifies, yes, the Air Jordan logo itself as yet another marker of gang affiliation.
21:39 Speaker 01 But then they look behind him, and they see that there's this guy that also has his head shaved, but they see that the thumb looks like Jerse's thumb.
21:48 Pablo Torre? Hmm.
21:48 Speaker 01 Right? And his sister and his mom know that Jerse's thumb, I guess, is a certain way.
21:54 Pablo Torre? A goalie's thumb is a particular digit.
21:57 Speaker 01 And that is what makes them realize that their son, their brother, their loved one, is in fact inside of Segovia.
22:05 Pablo Torre? Which ends up being something, by the way, that Jerse, to us, in this interview you did, establishes, yes, that is in fact definitely me.
22:17 Speaker 01 And when I asked him to confirm that, he even got a little bit emotional. I think, again, going back to that time and seeing the way that he was treated, kneeling down in that way, you could tell that it was hard for him to relive that moment.
22:32 Pablo Torre? What happens after that specific moment?
22:35 Speaker 01 So they get there, and they shave their heads, and everyone is sort of sent to their cells. But what I think Jerse is always reminding me is that the guards around him kept telling him "Bienvenido al infierno en la tierra", which literally means "Welcome to Hell on Earth", is I think there was always this understanding that they were never going to leave that place, right? That they were to be treated like terrorists, that we're going to die.
23:01 Pablo Torre? Yeah, once you remember that so many of these guys are not criminals at all. They're like soccer coaches and hairdressers and normal people, people that we should relate to as innocent civilians, some of whom, by the way, their crime allegedly was protest, protesting against an authoritarian government, the Maduro regime in Venezuela. It just makes me wonder, like, what does that actually sound like? What is that scene as they're being told, actually, "You're gonna be treated like you're a terrorist now"?
23:30 Speaker 01 What he told me is that he remembers the sound of people yelling around him,
23:37 Speaker 01 screaming, even some people fainting. I think it was very evident as he was speaking that he saw a lot of things, right? A lot of dark things, people being beat up. He said that at least once or twice a week, and there was a lot of violence. He too was hit by several officials and several of the guards inside there. And I asked him, I'm playing blank. ¿Consideras que...? Is this what you lived? Is this torture? ¿Es tortura? Sí.
24:08 Speaker 01 Es tortura, literalmente una tortura. And he said yes? Tanto físicamente como psicológicamente. That it was this physical, physical violence, but it was also psychological violence.
24:20 Pablo Torre? And this is something that is backed up by reporting from Human Rights Watch, which points out that these men from Venezuela, quote, "were subjected to constant beatings."
24:29 Speaker 01 I think beyond that, right, I think they tried to make their lives as difficult as possible, and in kind of the weirdest ways, right? So, one of the things that he kept talking about was that they wouldn't let them shower until 4:30 in the morning. A esa hora tenías que bañarte, si no te bañaba... They could only take showers at 4:30 in the morning. If it was any time before that, the guards would beat them.
24:52 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I mean, this is seemingly designed to emotionally and physically, psychologically, just destroy an innocent person.
25:02 Speaker 01 Hershey even ended up in what was known as La Isla, the island, which was the solitary confinement. And so, he even had an experience inside that place himself. He was stuck for about six hours. Obviously, he didn't talk to anyone, it was small. And there are reports of other detainees that ended up in similar situations, and reports have even said that some people were sexually assaulted. I asked Hershey if he knew anything about them. ...que a él la abusaron sexualmente. O sea, eso, ¿oíste algo de eso? ¿Es común? Pues, de escuchar, de escuchar, no... He said no, but he did tell me though, and I thought this was interesting,
25:43 Speaker 01 that no one knew, no one knows what happened inside that Isla, that solitary confinement.
25:48 Pablo Torre? I'm imagining just like having kids. He has daughters. Again, he has people that are so worried, and based on what he is describing, which again is validated separately with the experiences of others by Human Rights Watch, those loved ones were right to be deeply disturbed and horrified and constantly checking in, like, "How can we get him out?" And meanwhile, Hershey, in his head, where does he turn to as all of that is happening?
26:22 Speaker 01 Yo pensaba mucho en mis hijas. En Carla, Isabella. En Carla e Isabella.
26:30 Speaker 01 He thinks about his daughters, but then he also thinks about soccer. And he told me that he had this, the stream... Yo siempre le estaba dando abrazo a mis hijas, y cuando yo dejaba de dar abrazo, estaba en la cancha de fútbol jugando. He had this, the stream of a soccer field. And where he saw himself, and he once again re-envisioned himself playing again. He thinks about this soccer field. Not only he has these visions of himself in the soccer field, but also with his daughters, giving hugs to his daughters.
27:05 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and the thing that I'm imagining, as I hear Jersey say that, is I'm imagining those kids in that video that we started with, the kids who were praying.
27:20 Pablo Torre? While they are sending that image out into the universe, their coach is kind of doing the same thing.
27:34 Speaker 01 But then there's one thing that, that really, really, I think, gets him going. And that is that at some point, along the journey, inside of that, that hell, someone tells Jersey that the world is watching, right? And someone tells him that there was someone that looked like his sister, Yorraelis, that kept advocating for Jersey from the outside. Esa gente se está moviendo allá, mano, que como no tienen idea. And so, even when he explains it, you can tell how excited, you know, he was when so many of the detainees that were locked up, that had absolutely no contact with the outside world, suddenly understand that the entire world is talking about
28:17 Speaker 01 these Venezuelan detainees inside Nayib Bukele's Cog. And then, it's very evident, you know, Jersey says that that gave him enough energy to understand that one day, he could leave that prison. That was the hope he needed to, to hold on to something.
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30:14 Pablo Torre? I always want to be mindful of when I am overdramatizing something. But I read these reports by Human Rights Watch, Paula, and I'll just quote it. "In early April, the Venezuelans carried out a protest after guards beat up a fellow inmate and sprayed pepper spray in his mouth. The detainee fainted, but some detainees thought that the detainee, who they said had asthma, was dead." Which is to say that, okay, [BLEEP]. Like, they're trying.
30:40 Speaker 01 There's resistance.
30:41 Pablo Torre? There's resistance.
30:42 Speaker 01 Exactly, and I think that was amazing to hear that directly from Jerse, right? That even in the midst of these horrendous conditions, where literally your life is at risk, like, people resisted. And so Jerse talks about this hunger strike, but then he also talks about this day in which some of the detainees tried to escape. He wasn't one of them. I think he was too scared. He remembers that day particularly because of the way that the guards reacted, right? There was so much violence, he remembers that.
31:12 Speaker 01 Apparently, the guards started shooting at everyone with their shotguns. And Dersi says that they shot at him as well. But that it was a horrible day and he didn't know how it was going to end up.
31:33 Pablo Torre? That's in April. Protest continue into early May, and now we're in July. This is when we get word of the aforementioned prisoner swap. But Hersay, how does Hersay find out? How is he now realizing, oh my God, I'm actually getting out of hell after four months of it?
31:51 Speaker 01 So remember when I told you that typically the guys showered at 4:30 a.m., right? Not before, not after, but exactly at 4:30 a.m. But there's this one night where at 2 a.m., the guards yell and they tell all the detainees, they say, "Atención, atención población."
32:12 Speaker 01 Which literally means, "Attention, attention, people. You guys have 20 minutes to bathe." Hersay remembers that vividly because he knew that that had to mean something, or that something was going on, enough for them to be allowed to shower 2 a.m. Not only that, they get shampoo that day, they get shaving cream, they get toothpaste. So again, like, Hersay has a feeling that maybe they'll get out?
32:34 Pablo Torre? Right, the signal is suddenly they care about how they actually might present to the outside world.
32:40 Speaker 01 Exactly, and he told me...
32:44 Speaker 01 "Esto está raro, no?" That's what they kept telling themselves, which literally means like something is up, something is weird, something's going on.
32:51 Pablo Torre? What were horrifying haunting screams when they enter this place, there must be a different emotional sort of tenor as all of this is happening out in, you know, among the general population of this prison.
33:06 Speaker 01 He says that that was the best shower of his life.
33:10 Speaker 01 His 2 a.m. shampoo shower, like, that was it. And when he talks about it, he gets goosebumps to this day.
33:18 Pablo Torre? And when do they officially get told that they're about to be free?
33:22 Speaker 01 So they're not necessarily told that they'll be free, but they're placed in this bus, which means that they're leaving Seco. Finally, so they put a bunch of detainees in this bus. And what Jerse tells me is that in the moment, when they are finally out of this terrorist prison cell, when they're sitting down in this bus, he looks around his group. And they all make a pledge. And they tell themselves, they promise themselves that no matter what, no matter what happens, no matter where they go, no matter what the guards do, that they will not go back inside Seco. And that is what they say, that they would rather lose their lives than going back to this terrorist prison cell. They're waiting on this bus.
34:07 Speaker 01 They go into El Salvador's International Airport. They're waiting around, and then finally, this guard walks up to the detainees and says the words that to this day, Jerse remembers vividly. We're going back to Venezuela. You're going home.
34:25 Pablo Torre? And so this is where the two timelines, the inside world of Seco and the outside world that we've been talking about, that have been like, sort of trying to interact with each other through these walls. They actually finally get to connect and they intersect. Because the plane lands, Jerse gets on this bus, and the bus finally makes its way back to his hometown, this small town in Venezuela, Maricas, where he is not this terrorist and this anonymous guy with his head shaved behind the dude with the Air Jordan tattoo on his neck with his own terrorist marker allegedly on his forearm. He's back to where he gets to be, his actual self, this soccer coach, this soccer player.
35:11 Pablo Torre? And the video that gets posted on Twitter is where my mind kind of started melting, because he was home.
35:22 Pablo Torre? I mean, this is like, you know, this is Diego Maradona.
35:27 Speaker 01 Literally, yeah.
35:27 Pablo Torre? Just like the idol is returned.
35:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, after being called a terrorist and a gang member and to be then received as a hero.
35:37 Pablo Torre? This is like a Taylor Swift level number of phones with like their flashlights all out. He's hugging people. He's, it's just like he's immediately welcomed back a hero.
35:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, and what's beautiful is that Jairse hadn't really seen that footage and those images before. And so we watched it together and he was very emotional. He was even crying. It's still overwhelming for him to understand.
36:09 Speaker 01 To understand what maybe he couldn't really see inside that cell, right? Which is that people love him and that people were waiting for him. And like he says, he is everything that Donald Trump doesn't want him to be. He is a hero.
36:24 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it's just yet another sports story, another story of an innocent man that this administration wishes people never actually heard.
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38:21 Pablo Torre? So this has been a very human, on-the-ground story so far, but it is worth pointing out that there is a series of actual legal claims here being made about the treatment of these innocent men at CICOT. And the international condemnation we were referring to, the world watching, has sort of culminated with this organization called the League of United Latin American Citizens. And we are told that they are filing claims for damages, for unlawful detention, physical and psychological, as you were explaining before, under the Federal Tort's Claim Act, on behalf of the detainees. And we're also told that this case might come before the Inter-American Commission
38:58 Pablo Torre? on Human Rights, which is, again, one hell of a place to escalate to because of a soccer tattoo.
39:09 Speaker 01 Because of someone's drive to find that American dream.
39:13 Pablo Torre? Yes. Harrisay wanted to become an American. And the question is, does he think that was a mistake? Like, how does Harrisay feel about the United States, which he was only in for so long before he got disappeared to hell?
39:27 Speaker 01 I mean, I was so curious about that question, right? Because the core of all these immigration stories has always been about going north. I mean, generations of immigrants like him have always, always, always left their countries to seek that American dream north. And they asked him, is it worth it? Would you do it again? He said, no.
39:46 Speaker 01 La verdad, no vale la pena. He said, "It is not worth it, no vale la pena."
39:52 Speaker 01 And one of the things is that a lot of people in his small town, a lot of those young soccer players that we heard, a lot of the kids that are praying for Jerse every day, like, it is very typical for them to also leave, to do what Jerse did, you know, which is to leave their small town and seek that dream elsewhere. And Jerse's advice to those kids is to stay. Yo les aconsejo que sigan su sueño dentro de su país. To try and find whatever you were looking for in the US inside your own local teams and your local towns and to stick to your roots.
40:25 Pablo Torre? And it is worth pointing out here that Donald Trump simultaneously, as this story is still unfolding, is bringing the World Cup to the United States.
40:35 Speaker 01 Jerse always wanted to go there, by the way.
40:37 Pablo Torre? I mean, of course, of course, of course. But Jerse now has this position of being, hopefully, someone that people beyond our audience will listen to, especially on immigration. And he says what about people who might want to visit the country because they're also enormous diehard soccer fans?
40:56 Speaker 01 Sadly, he's telling people to not come. Y pues me da miedo que haya una redada de ice y los vayan a agarrar, solo por él. He sees the potential of these ice raids taking place around the World Cup. He sees the potential of people that look just like him, right, these brown people with sports tattoos that can be racially profiled and can perhaps end up disappeared. And so his advice is, "Don't come, don't go to the World Cup." I mean, how sad is that?
41:22 Pablo Torre? This is not the happy ending that I think
41:26 Pablo Torre? we were promised when we started this.
41:28 Speaker 01 I know, but I promised you a good ending, though.
41:31 Pablo Torre? So how did the rest of Jerse's interview with you go?
41:34 Speaker 01 So you know how it ended? It ended because he had to go to practice. It ended because...
41:40 Pablo Torre? Jerse had a heart out. Like any good podcast guest, he's like, "I gotta get out by this time."
41:45 Speaker 01 He had to leave, but he had to leave for the best reason, which is that Jerse is back doing what he loves to do, which is playing soccer, but coaching. He's back at Perijanero Football Club, coaching those kids that we heard at the beginning of the show, the very same kids that were praying for him, that were thinking about him when he was disappeared for all those months. And the kids never forgot him.
42:12 Pablo Torre? The video of their reunion. When they're like hanging off of him like a koala, you know, just like clinging to him. All of these hugs that we're seeing in that video on this soccer field that Hesse had been dreaming about while he was at CICAT. It's not the dream he wanted. It's not the American dream that he was hoping for. But it is one that actually did ultimately come true.
42:36 Speaker 01 So now his big dream is to to open his own goalie school. And that's literally what he's focused on, right? Like, that's all he wants to do, to give those kids a new goalie school.
42:45 Pablo Torre? Yeah, he wants to raise another generation of goalies, of Hesse's. And and those kids, by the way, like the future of Venezuela, this country that is once again in the news cycle in the American context. How do they talk about this stuff? Like, do they know what happened?
43:02 Speaker 01 So I don't think they do, right? Like, I think the big picture, like, they don't really know what and who Naibou Kelle is. They don't really know what CICAT is, but what they do know is that their favorite soccer player, this goalie, went through literally hell because of a tattoo, because of a Real Madrid tattoo. And so Hesse was telling me that that is kind of the number one question that the kids have, right? Like, did all of this really happen to you because of this sports tattoo?
43:28 Pablo Torre? It sounds like what Hesse is also raising is another generation of frontrunners, of of Real Madrid fans.
43:33 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, that's not gone anywhere. I mean, it was it was to the point that when Hesse is is finally back, you know, when he comes back to his hometown, they literally have a Real Madrid themed party for him as a as a welcoming party. I mean, that's that's how much they love Real Madrid in this town.
43:50 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I mean, these are two like columns of young kids in their soccer uniforms, in their cleats, holding, you know, these white balloons, wearing these blue jerseys. And Hesse gets to, yeah, walk through and high five literally everybody.
44:06 Speaker 01 I know, they love him. They love, I mean, look at the way that they're they're looking at him, you know, with like so much pride.
44:13 Pablo Torre? Yes.
44:13 Speaker 01 Like, they want to be like him.
44:15 Pablo Torre? Absolutely. Finally.
44:18 Pablo Torre? The goalkeeper gets a soccer ball in between both hands and he gets to hold that. That was the last image in that video. But I also understand, Pala, that this was not the last thing that Hesse wanted to communicate.
44:32 Speaker 01 Oh, no. It gets even better. I told you. He, uh, believe it or not, he wants another Real Madrid tattoo.
44:40 Speaker 02 Y he ha cutizado ya realizarme el verdadero escudo de Real Madrid en esta parte de Brasil, acá.
44:46 Speaker 01 A ver, a ver, ¿dónde?
44:47 Speaker 02 En esta parte.
44:48 Speaker 01 O sea que ahí, ahí debemos hacer otro tatuaje. So, one of the questions I had for him is, after everything you went through, right? Like, after everything you lived, do you regret this Real Madrid tattoo? Like, would you do it again?
45:03 Speaker 02 Un nuevo, un nuevo. La gente me dice que por tenerme borrado los tatuajes...
45:08 Speaker 01 Would you erase it? And he said that he has no regrets at all. In fact, the opposite, right? That he did nothing wrong. That all of this happened to him simply because of his love, his genuine love for this soccer team.
45:20 Speaker 02 Que sí me creí putando algo, y la verdad que no.
45:22 Speaker 01 And that that's nothing to be ashamed of. He feels no shame. He knows that that tattoo does not make him a criminal. And so, he wants to kind of redefine that and get more, get another Real Madrid tattoo.
45:41 Pablo Torre? You know, the subtext of this entire conversation is, who gets to look like one of the good ones? Who gets to look like someone that America would welcome? Who looks to look like an innocent man? And we have seen this administration and all of these allegedly cool dictators use sports to pervert sports itself. And so, yeah, Hesse at the end saying, "F*** you." And in fact, I'm even more of a sports fan, a Real Madrid supporter, a pro athlete, a coach, than you even thought, is a form of genuine resistance that I just am so hardened to see him embrace.
46:22 Speaker 01 Part of the story is that you have these administrations that thought that they could criminalize these sports tattoos and these athletes. And now, the real story is that... Dirce really proves that the survival instinct of an athlete, you know, that resilience that he showed inside of Segot, that resilience that he showed, that he was able to envision hope. I imagine, I'm not one, but I imagine that that is what an athlete does. You know, that when it feels like you're about to lose, or when it feels like the game is going to go the other way, somehow you understand, you gotta keep going. So we started with one Real Madrid tattoo that got him to hell. And now we end with a second Real Madrid tattoo that gets him where?
47:04 Pablo Torre? To freedom.
47:05 Speaker 01 There you go.
47:14 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
47:41 Speaker 02 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.
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