On 7 April, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could continue deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador’s “supermax” CECOT prison, referred to by observers as a “human rights black hole.” In March, more than 260 people were deported and placed in the facility under the US’s controversial agreement with El Salvador, which critics argue was “carefully orchestrated to keep courts in the dark.” The scheme is the latest in the US administration’s efforts to massively weaponise immigration detention and deportation measures, as well as to externalise migration controls beyond its borders, which have included the aborted attempt to ramp up detention at the notorious “Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center” in Cuba.
Deported Under a Wartime Act
On 15 March, three planes carried 261 male foreign nationals from the USA to El Salvador. Two hundred and thirty eight of those on the flights were Venezualans, and twenty three others were El Salvadorans. According to reports, in the lead up to 15 March, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested and detained men who displayed “gang identifiers” (like tattoos, “high-end urban streetwear,” or clothing from American sports teams with Venezuelan team members) suggesting links to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang or MS-13. Others with suspected links to the gangs and who were already in detention were moved to the El Valle Detention Facility where they were held ahead of their removal.
The Trump administration has argued that the deportations are allowed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows authorities to arrest and deport non-citizens during times of war, with no right to question their deportation in front of a judge. Although the Trump administration has regularly used military rhetoric when discussing irregular migration at the southern border, portraying it as an “invasion,” legal experts argue that it wrongly used this wartime law for peacetime immigration purposes. A federal judge had temporarily blocked the president from invoking the act and ordered the flights to return–but the deportations proceeded. Posting a screenshot of a news article covering the judge’s decision, El Salvador’s President Bukele wrote on X, “Oopsie… too late (laughing face emoji).” (More about the Aliens Enemies Act, which was last invoked during World War II, can be found here.)
While the US administration claimed that those deported were “monsters,” “terrorists,” and “gang members,” many relatives stated that the deportees had no ties to gangs and no criminal record–highlighting the extreme danger of deportation without legal oversight. A US District Judge stated that many were in fact Venezuelans with Title 8 removal orders–many of whom were “in ICE custody awaiting asylum and other protective hearings.” An investigation by 60 Minutes also revealed that 179 of the men had no criminal record, in the US or abroad.
One particularly notable case is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran man who was amongst the group deported on 15 March. Although he was deported under the claim he was a member of MS-13, he has had protected status in the USA since 2019 due to a credible fear of violence or torture in El Salvador. The Trump administration has now admitted in a court document that his removal was an “administrative error,” but that he cannot be returned to the US because they lack jurisdiction.
On 7 April the US Supreme Court ruled that, while the administration may temporarily continue to use the wartime act to deport migrants, deportees must be provided with a court hearing prior to their removal.
Shackled and Shaved
The treatment of the deportees upon arrival in El Salvador has raised serious concerns amongst observers. A Time photojournalist, who was on the tarmac as the planes landed, wrote that they were greeted by “an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army to apprehend them.” Amongst them was El Salvador’s Minister of Defence, who personally dragged one deportee off a plane himself. Masked guards brandished guns and hauled deportees by their hair onto buses; armoured vehicles flanked the convoy of buses as they left the airport; and soldiers and police lined intersections on the highway. A video shared by President Trump on his social network, Truth Social, complete with sinister music and action movie-style shots, similarly showed these scenes in horrifying detail.
The deportees’ destination was El Salvador’s infamous prison, CECOT–or “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” (Terrorism Confinement Centre). Opened in 2023 in Tecoluca amidst a large-scale gang crackdown in the country, the CECOT has capacity for 40,000 criminal inmates (with each cell holding 65-70 men), making it one of the largest prisons in the world. Although US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that El Salvador would hold detainees in their “very good jails,” all other descriptions of the facility holding the detainees paint a horrifying picture, and highlight that conditions violate the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Amongst concerns are: windowlesss cells, omnipresent surveillance and zero privacy,, heavily armed guards, bright lights throughout the day and night, and violence due to the intentional mixing of gang members within the same cells. Additional observations include:
- Miguel Sarre, a former member of the UN Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture, described it as “concrete and steel pit” and as a space to “dispose of people without formally applying the death penalty.”
- US District Judge Paula Xinis described it as “a notorious supermax prison known for widespread human rights violations” and as having “some of the most inhuman and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.”
According to the Time photojournalist, upon arrival deportees were forced to have their heads shaved, were stripped naked, and were hauled into cells. “They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.”
The use of a criminal facility like CECOT, and the detention of non-nationals alongside convicted criminals, is also a clear violation Article 17(2) of the UN Convention on Migrant Workers (“Accused migrant workers and members of their families shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from convicted persons and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons”) which El Salvador ratified in 2003.
Internationalising Abuse
Much has been made of President Trump’s plan to deport “millions” from the country. As the GDP previously reported, hundreds have already been deported for detention in countries like Panama and Costa Rica, where rights groups argue deportees face a slate of abuses. In the case of El Salvador, the agreement between the US and El Salvadoran governments provides for El Salvador to detain deportees from the US, regardless of their nationality. The deal also extends to violent American criminals. In exchange for its detention of 238 Venezuelans, Bukele’s government is reportedly receiving US 6 million from the US.
Like the UK’s and Denmark’s efforts to externalise detention to Rwanda, and Italy’s attempts to set up detention centres in Albania, the US’ deportation of non-nationals for detention in El Salvador parallels efforts by other wealthy destination states to externalise and outsource detention operations to third countries. As the GDP has often highlighted, such practice is inherently problematic–legally and ethically–and further shields states from scrutiny.
