Photo via Amnestry International
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The self-identifying “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, prompted the possibility of imprisoning violent United States criminals and deportees of any nationality in early February of 2025. In this dystopian migratory agreement between the United States and El Salvador, United States President Donald J. Trump purposely perpetuates state-sanctioned terror that undermines the rights of Salvadorans and extends it to individuals of varying national origins and legal statuses.
To cement this newfound bilateral carceral and deportation system, the United States State Department has paid El Salvador six million dollars to house hundreds of immigrants deported from the United States to a notoriously brutal and inhumane mega-prison designed for terrorists, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). While Bukele paints his prisons as “the best in the world” on social media sites like TikTok, reports from inside CECOT and other Salvadoran prisons reveal cruel conditions that violate international human rights.
El Salvador’s carceral crisis derives from a history of decades of gang violence, notably furthered by deportations enacted by the Clinton administration in the 1990s. As the Clinton administration deported members of gangs in the Los Angeles area, gang-specific crime spiked in El Salvador. For years, El Salvador was known as the “murder capital of the world,” reaching a homicide rate of 106 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015. Making Salvadoran citizens victims of extortion, homicide, and femicide, gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18 terrorized neighborhoods around the country.
To combat the rise in gang violence, Bukele solidified his “war on gangs” in March 2022 when his supporters in the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved Decree No. 333. The law effectively enforces a state of exception, in which a range of constitutional rights, including due process, are suspended. What began in March 2022 has since become a permanent policy in which justice, the rule of law, and human rights are relinquished for mass incarceration and a false promise of national safety.
Since the declaration of the state of emergency, the overall homicide rate has fallen by more than 80 percent, according to the National Civil Police. However, the state of exception has been extended 36 times, allowing Salvadoran authorities to systematically undermine constitutional and human rights.
As of March 27, 2025, three years after the state of exception began, there are more than 110,000 imprisoned, with 85,000 individuals detained and awaiting trial, often on vaguely defined crimes. Approximately 1.8% of the Salvadoran population is behind bars. For reference, in the United States, the prison population in 2024 was roughly 1,808,100 people, and the overall population was approximately 340.1 million.
Out of the imprisonment rate, an estimated 350 individuals have died in state custody over the last two years. Based on photographic evidence and various survivor testimony, they suggest that these deaths were due to the role that the government played in the direct abuse that occurred within the prisons.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has stated that El Salvador’s prisons have committed torture as well as other cruel and inhumane treatment. They have also received numerous reports of illegal and arbitrary detentions, unlawful raids on homes, excessive use of force, and violations of the rights of children and adolescents.
The U.S. Department of State’s 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador noted credible reports “of abuse and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards” from human rights organizations. Although human rights groups have been barred from accessing CECOT to investigate the conditions, organizations like Human Rights Watch have conducted interviews of released prisoners and relatives/friends of those imprisoned.
In one interview, an 18-year-old construction worker said that police beat prison newcomers with batons for an hour. In one horrific incident, upon denying being a gang member, he was sent to a dark basement cell with 320 detainees, where daily beatings by prison guards and fellow detainees occurred. During an especially brutal beating, a guard attacked him so severely that he broke one of his ribs.
Such brutality is enabled by El Salvador’s imprisonment of citizens under the crime of illicit association, meaning the individual is held under suspicion that they are gang members. In its persecutions, the Salvadoran government uses mass trials to avoid criminal investigations and incarcerates people without probable cause. El Salvador’s lack of due process breaches international standards of justice and results in the incarceration of innocent people. But President Bukele has shown little concern over the country’s lack of justice and rule of law.
With the current Trump administration utilizing the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to deport immigrants from the United States to CECOT, it is evident that President Trump is equally uninterested in maintaining due process and rule of law.
The Alien Enemies Act is a wartime authorization that allows the president to detain or deport the citizens or natives of an enemy nation. It was initially designed to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage during wartime; however, the Trump administration is using the authority to deport more than 260 Venezuelan migrants, who are allegedly members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
The U.S. federal government publicly declared the enforcement of the wartime act on March 15th at 3:53 pm, and 238 Venezuelan deportees were all on flights to El Salvador by 7:36 pm. The Trump administration claims that all deportees are members of Tren de Aragua. Officials declare they used criminal records, surveillance data, social media, interviews, and other information, like tattoos, to make accusations.
Nevertheless, a New York Times investigation found that most of the men had little evidence of any criminal background or association with the Venezuelan gang. While the findings are not comprehensive, as there is no global public database to search every accusation, the investigation concludes that only 56 deportees have a criminal history. 32 of the deportees have faced serious criminal allegations in the United States and abroad, and another 24 men have been accused of or found guilty of non-violent lower-level offenses such as trespassing or speeding.
One of the most serious criminals on board the March 15 flights was Cesar Lopez-Larios, an alleged key MS-13 leader, who is believed to have critical information that could incriminate Salvadoran government officials over corrupt deals with the gang.
The remaining 182 Venezuelan deportees, according to the Times, have no criminal backgrounds other than offenses related to their undocumented status. One of these men is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the dubbed “Maryland man” who was deported to El Salvador in an administrative error. The Trump administration used flimsy evidence to label Garcia a member of MS-13 and deport him to a country he is legally prohibited from being deported to.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Garcia’s deportation was a mistake, and the U.S. government must help “facilitate” his return. But while the Trump administration is court-ordered to take steps to return the Maryland man, President Trump and President Bukele maintain that Garcia is a terrorist.
In Bukele’s Oval Office meeting on April 14, the Salvadoran president called the idea of following the order and returning Garcia “preposterous.”
This wholly tyrannical occurrence has resulted in numerous court cases initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union or federal judges like U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. On March 15, Judge Boasberg temporarily ordered the White House to halt the deportation flights to El Salvador. However, the Supreme Court overturned Boasberg’s judicial order in a five-to-four decision.
On April 19, the Supreme Court blocked any further deportations of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, a judicial order that is likely temporary. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the Trump administration will follow judicial proceedings that strike down immigration and foreign policy.
The Trump administration’s migratory agreement with El Salvador denies its Venezuelan migrants any level of effective due process. However, in the aforementioned Oval Office meeting with President Bukele, Trump boasted that “home-growns are next” and that El Salvador would “need to build about five more places” to hold American citizens.
The idea of sending American citizens to effectively foreign concentration camps is unlawful and unconstitutional. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guarantee due process to all individuals within the United States, no matter their legal status. Yet U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is actively searching for legal pathways to deport American citizens to El Salvador. As seen in Garcia’s case, sending American criminals to El Salvador will remove them from any legal protections or processes that the United States Constitution grants them.
While President Trump’s current objective has been deemed unlawful by numerous legal scholars, it is also important to note that it is brutally inhumane. President Bukele has upheld a policy of state terror for more than two years, and now the United States president wishes to terrorize undocumented migrants and his citizens with an overarching policy of deportation.
El Salvador’s violation of human rights is extensive and outright barbaric. Currently, President Trump, the leader of the free world, wishes to apply systematic acts of violence and terror on American undocumented residents and legal citizens.
One would believe that the United States would be a leader in condemning state-perpetrated violations of international human rights. However, the Trump administration is monetarily subcontracting it under the guise of immigration control and national security.
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This article was edited by Natasha Tretter and Emily Campagna.
Thomas Tisdale 
David Tomanelli 
Sinhawe Haji