The 'Judicial Black Hole' of El Salvador's Prisons Is a Warning for Americans

Summary

On March 27, 2022, on the heels of a weekend marked by dozens of gang-related murders, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and his legislature plunged the country into a régimen de excepción — a state of exception — and declared war against the gangs. The state of exception suspended fundamental rights like freedom of assembly and association, the right to legal representation, and the right to see a judge within 72 hours of detention. The age of criminal responsibility was lowered to 12. The crackdown that ensued saw tens of thousands of arrests of suspected gang members, who were tried en masse and disappeared into the nation’s prison system without even the illusion of due process. Allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses abounded — and still do. Bukele is serving a second term despite a constitutional prohibition against it. The state of exception — originally a 30-day decree — has been extended 37 times. Over the course of three years, human rights in El Salvador have crumbled under its boot. It’s here that President Donald Trump hopes to find a workable model for his own immigration crackdown, and the potential eradication of opposition to his nativist, right-wing agenda. In March, the Trump administration sent three plane loads of primarily Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they were greeted by professional camera crews, blinding lights, and soldiers clad in military fatigues who manhandled them as they were frogmarched, shaved, and transported into the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — a massive prison that functions as both a detention center, and a propaganda soundstage for the Bukele government. The planes landed in El Salvador despite a court order from a federal judge blocking the administration from deporting the detained migrants to a third nation without appropriate due process. The Trump administration paid El Salvador at least $6 million for the stunt, and the migrants have been thrust into a legal...