San Salvador (AFP) – Supporters of Venezuelans deported by the United States to El Salvador said Friday they had been refused permission to see the migrants in prison.

The spurned group included the first family member of a detainee to come to the Central American nation in hopes of establishing contact with them.

More than 250 Venezuelans were expelled by the United States to El Salvador in March after being accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

"I came with great hope," Jhoanna Sanguino, the aunt of 24-year-old Widmer Agelvis Sanguino, told AFP shortly before leaving El Salvador.

"I promised my sister that her boy would soon be free, and I promised many mothers. I don't want them to lose faith. We were so close, yet so far away," she said.

Sanguino was accompanied by Reina Cardenas, a friend of deportee Andry Hernandez Romero, and activists from the Amparo Foundation, a human rights NGO providing legal support to some of the Venezuelans.

They said their request to visit the migrants in the high-security CECOT prison built by President Nayib Bukele to house gang members was unsuccessful.

US President Donald Trump invoked rarely used wartime laws to fly many of the migrants to El Salvador without holding any court hearings.

His administration struck a deal to pay the government of ally Bukele millions of dollars to hold the deportees in prison.

"There are 252 Venezuelans whose families are crying and fighting for them," said Sanguino.

Relatives are waiting in Venezuela for "some contact, by phone or a letter, some proof of life," she said.

A law firm hired by Caracas to represent some of the other detained Venezuelans also says that it has been denied access.