El salvador

In March 2025, the United States disappeared nearly 300 people—238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans—to El Salvador, sending them to the country’s notorious high-security prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). Another 27 Venezuelans and Salvadorans were disappeared to the CECOT in late March and in early April. Many of the Venezuelans were in the midst of U.S. immigration court proceedings; because U.S. immigration law does not allow their removal while their cases were pending, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to authorize their expulsion. As a result, some with pending asylum claims were denied the right to have their case decided by a U.S. immigration judge when they were unlawfully expelled. Others had been approved by U.S. refugee officers for refugee resettlement because they faced persecution in Venezuela (meaning that the U.S. government had already determined that they were refugees and that they had passed security and background checks). Some individuals sent to CECOT had final orders of removal. Because the U.S. government refused to disclose the full list of people, the identities and legal circumstances of many remain unknown.

While imprisoned in the CECOT, the migrants and asylum seekers were subjected to enforced disappearances, indefinite and incommunicado detention, torture, sexual assault, and severe beatings. After months of imprisonment, the Venezuelan individuals were expelled onward to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange in July 2025, resulting in the forcible return (in some cases amounting to chain refoulement) of asylum seekers who had never had their asylum cases heard by the United States and people who had already been determined by U.S. refugee officers to face persecution in Venezuela. Andry Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker from Venezuela, reported being sexually abused by prison staff in CECOT, describing the experience as: “[w]e were stuck in hell, and we were told we would never leave that place.” Dozens of Salvadorans remain detained incommunicado in CECOT, their fates unknown.

The expulsions to El Salvador took place under a secret bilateral arrangement between the United States and El Salvador. For months, no official information was released about the agreement until July 2025 when an exchange of diplomatic notes surfaced, reportedly conducted on or around March 13 and 14, 2025, revealing that asylum seekers and migrants sent to El Salvador were to be jailed for a year pending “further decisions.” Missing from the documents were key elements of the agreement, such as payment details between the United States and El Salvador and which government held ultimate custody over the detained people. Information was also missing about U.S. officials’ promises regarding the return of protected Salvadoran informants in U.S. custody— individuals who held information about President Nayib Bukele’s ties to MS-13—on the flights to El Salvador. While U.S. officials repeatedly denied responsibility for the detention of the men transferred to El Salvador, Salvadoran statements to the United Nations contradicted that claim. Litigation later revealed that the United States paid El Salvador $4.76 million in March 2025, earmarked in part for imprisoning asylum seekers and migrants in CECOT. Government records made public through litigation revealed that this payment was made shortly after the United States ignored a federal court order and transferred hundreds of people to El Salvador. Conditions were attached to the funds, including prohibitions on El Salvador assisting asylum seekers with access to resources or legal counsel.

Federal courts have repeatedly held that the expulsions to El Salvador were unlawful and accused the Trump administration of openly defying court orders. In J.G.G. v. Trump, a federal district court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order blocking the expulsions of Venezuelans under the AEA and directing the government to return any flights that had already taken off. The U.S. government did not comply with this ruling and proceeded to transfer people to El Salvador, leading the federal judge to accuse Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials of “willful disobedience of judicial orders” and find probable cause to hold them in contempt. This decision was reversed by a court of appeals, but months later a majority of judges on the court of appeals allowed the contempt proceedings to move forward in late November 2025. The Supreme Court held in April 2025 that expulsions under the AEA had to be challenged through habeas petitions in the jurisdiction where people were detained, but, importantly, that “notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” 

The administration not only violated federal court orders blocking the flights to El Salvador and ordering their return, but also violated longstanding court orders in individual instances. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to “effectuate and facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been deported in violation of an immigration court order granting him withholding of removal—which prohibited his deportation to El Salvador. The judge found that the government was engaging in “willful and bad faith” noncompliance in the case, leading her to threaten DHS officials with contempt proceedings. The Supreme Court narrowed the ruling of the district court judge, but upheld the lower court’s ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. Abrego Garcia was later returned to the United States after reportedly suffering torture in the CECOT but ICE detained him and is attempting to deport him to other third countries. Another federal judge stated that DHS officials had “utterly disregarded” her order to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker who was unlawfully expelled in violation of a court settlement. 

Deporting Venezuelans with final orders of removal to El Salvador is a part of DHS’s broader practice of deporting people to third countries that DHS never raised as a potential country of removal during their immigration proceedings, without notice or an opportunity to present a fear claim with respect to the third country. This practice denies them due process and risks their deportation to persecution and torture. It violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Constitutional due process protections, and international treaty obligations codified in U.S. law including the prohibition on refoulement. This practice was challenged before a U.S. federal district court in Massachusetts in D.V.D.  v. DHS, leading the court to enjoin third country removals without notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim. After the court issued a temporary restraining order on March 28, 2025, DHS removed multiple Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, claiming this did not violate the court’s order because it had shifted their custody to the Department of Defense and that they were sent to El Salvador on a military plane. The federal district court later converted its temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, but the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in June 2025 pending a decision on the merits. 

Under a “state of exception” that has existed in El Salvador for over two years, the non-governmental organization Cristosal (recently forced to leave El Salvador) has documented systematic and widespread human rights violations including arbitrary detentions, torture, and deaths that raise serious concerns about the potential commission of crimes against humanity by the Salvadoran State. As of December 2024, at least 265 people had died in state custody.  

Widespread abuses have been documented at CECOT, including solitary confinement, denial of communication with lawyers and families, and the staging of mass online hearings with hundreds of detained people at once. Journalists and human rights monitors are barred from independent access, and official state videos emphasize that those detained are “terrorists” who “will never leave.” Independent monitoring is blocked, and the few visits permitted for journalists or social media influencers occur under strict government control. In state-produced videos of these visits, authorities describe conditions in which prisoners are confined to their cells for 23.5 hours a day, with some placed in completely dark solitary cells.