SAN SALVADOR – The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime technique — a mega-prison the place visitation, recreation and schooling usually are not allowed — grew to become the most recent software in U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration on Sunday, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were transferred there.
The arrival of the immigrants, alleged by the U.S. to be members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, befell underneath an settlement for which the Trump administration pays the federal government of President Nayib Bukele $6 million for one 12 months of providers.
Bukele has made the Central American nation’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his struggle in opposition to crime. In 2023, he opened the Terrorism Confinement Middle, or CECOT, the place the immigrants have been despatched over the weekend regardless of a federal decide’s order briefly barring their deportations underneath an 18th century wartime declaration concentrating on Venezuelan gang members.
What’s the CECOT?
Bukele ordered the mega-prison constructed as he started his marketing campaign in opposition to El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a 12 months later within the city of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital.
The ability has eight sprawling pavilions and may maintain as much as 40,000 inmates. Every cell can match 65 to 70 prisoners.
CECOT prisoners don’t obtain visits and are by no means allowed outdoor. The jail doesn’t supply workshops or instructional applications to arrange them to return to society after their sentences.
Often, prisoners who’ve gained a degree of belief from jail officers give motivational talks. Prisoners sit in rows within the hall exterior their cells for the talks or are led via train regimens underneath the supervision of guards.
Bukele’s justice minister has mentioned that these held at CECOT would by no means return to their communities.
The jail’s eating halls, break rooms, gymnasium and board video games are for guards.
What number of prisoners does El Salvador maintain?
The federal government doesn’t commonly replace the determine, however the human rights group Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had 110,000 individuals behind bars, together with these sentenced to jail and people nonetheless awaiting trial. That is greater than double the 36,000 inmates that the federal government reported in April 2021, a 12 months earlier than Bukele ramped up his struggle in opposition to crime.
Cristosal and different advocates have accused authorities of human rights violations.
Cristosal reported final 12 months that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador’s prisons through the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited circumstances of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.
In slickly produced movies, the federal government has proven CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into widespread areas and made to sit down almost atop one another. Cells lack sufficient bunks for everybody.
Why have been immigrants despatched to CECOT?
The migrants have been deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used solely three times in U.S. historical past.
The regulation requires a president to declare the U.S. is at conflict, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or take away foreigners who in any other case would have protections underneath immigration or felony legal guidelines. Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the U.S. in invoking the wartime authority.
Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless jail in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom have been searching for higher dwelling circumstances after their nation’s financial system got here undone final decade.
The Trump administration has not recognized the migrants deported, supplied any proof they’re in reality members of Tren de Aragua or that they dedicated any crimes within the U.S.
Video launched by El Salvador’s authorities Sunday confirmed males exiting airplanes into an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The lads, who had with their arms and ankles shackled, struggled to stroll as officers pushed their heads right down to have them bend on the waist.
The video additionally confirmed the boys being transported to CECOT in a big convoy of buses guarded by police and army autos and not less than one helicopter. The lads have been proven kneeling on the bottom as their heads have been shaved earlier than they turned into the jail’s all-white uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and positioned in cells.
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Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.
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