The US has sent a Venezuelan LGBTQ+ asylum seeker to El Salvador’s version of the infamous Guantánamo Bay.
A legal battle is going on between Donald Trump’s administration and a federal judge over the president’s attempt to expel more than 130 immigrants from the US to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a “mega-prison” in El Salvador, claiming they were gang members.
Trump is using an 18th-century declaration, the Alien Enemies Act – last used during WWII – as a basis for his policy, but judge James Boasberg has temporarily blocked the move and expressed reservations that the deported migrants had no legal remedy to contest whether they were gang members or not.
“The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” the judge said.
Lawyer Margaret Cargioli, who is representing one of those deported, an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker, said she hadn’t been given a deportation order when her client was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
She called the sending of Venezuelan nationals to CECOT “extremely unusual and concerning,” especially because the terrorism confinement centre is notorious for torture and other human rights abuses.
In January, the president signed an executive order to instruct the departments of defence and homeland security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay, where human rights groups allege torture takes place.
What is CECOT?
Juan Pappier, who has investigated the prison system in El Salvador for Human Rights Watch, described CECOT as a “mega-prison” and said it was initially meant to hold 20,000 detainees, but that capacity has been doubled, despite claims it has only 256 beds.
Each cell can fit between 65 and 70 prisoners, according to The Independent.
The prison, which forms part of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele’s hard-line security policy, spans 23 hectares and cost $115m (£88.7 million) to develop and equip in 2023.
Images from inside the prison show prisoners packed together, with shaved heads and wearing white shorts and t-shirts. The prison lacks outdoor space, and families are not allowed to visit inmates.
“The government has publicly said that people who are sent to the CECOT will never be allowed out,” Pappier said. “We have not been able to identify any detainees who have left.
“This is an effort to create a Guantánamo on steroids, to put these people outside the protections of the law both in the United States and in El Salvador.”
A Human Rights Watch spokesperson alleged it was likely inmates would be subjected to “torture, deaths and enforced disappearance”.
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