US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, visited the maximum-security prison in El Salvador on Wednesday where more than 200 Venezuelans deported by Donald Trump’s government are imprisoned. On her first stop of a Latin American tour, Noem traveled to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the mega-prison that received 238 Venezuelans sent on March 16 as part of a controversial collaboration between President Nayib Bukele and Trump.
Noem observed the shirtless inmates behind bars at this heavily guarded prison, considered the largest in Latin America. “If you commit a crime, this is a consequence you may face,” said the official outside a cell where several inmates, apparently Salvadorans, had their bodies covered in tattoos.
After visiting CECOT, Noem wrote on social network X: “President Trump and I have a clear message for illegal criminal immigrants: LEAVE NOW.
If you don’t leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this Salvadoran prison. “Washington claimed the Venezuelans were members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and invoked a 1798 war law to deport them, but their families and Caracas insist they were simply undocumented migrants.
Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security, Gustavo Villatoro, accompanied Noem during the prison visit. CECOT has capacity for 40,000 inmates but currently houses about 15,000 alleged members of local criminal gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18. Upon leaving, Noem went to the government house in San Salvador to talk with Bukele about how to “increase the number of deportation flights and expulsions of violent criminals,” the official stated.
During the meeting with the president, she thanked El Salvador “for the collaboration” in “accepting deportation flights,” according to a press release from the US embassy. The note adds that both countries updated an agreement to share information on criminal records of fugitives. The embassy also indicated on X that the meeting between Noem and Bukele served “to strengthen cooperation on security and migration matters.”
Judicial Setback for Trump
Before beginning her tour that will later take her to Colombia and Mexico, Noem indicated that by resolving the deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador, they sent “the world the message that the United States is no longer a safe haven for violent criminals. “However, human rights organizations support the version that the Venezuelans sent by Washington to El Salvador are not criminals.
“There is growing evidence that many people who were sent to El Salvador are not from Tren de Aragua, and that they are exposed to serious human rights violations,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch (HRW).Additionally, a US appeals court on Wednesday rejected the White House’s attempt to lift a court order that prohibited deporting migrants in irregular situations under the 1798 law, used until now only in times of war.
Risky Move?
Washington paid “approximately 6 million dollars” to Bukele’s government for imprisoning these deportees, according to the White House. For analyst Diego Chaves-González, from the Migration Policy Institute in the United States, for Bukele “it could be a risky move” to collaborate with Trump, as it could “generate tensions” with a future US government, he told AFP.
Some 86,000 alleged gang members have been detained as part of Bukele’s war, which has now lasted three years, although about 8,000 were released after being declared innocent.
Deported Salvadorans
Political scientist Napoleón Campos stated that “there is no doubt” Bukele seeks to “show that he is a useful ally” of the Trump administration to ensure Salvadoran migrants are not deported. About 2.5 million Salvadorans live in the United States, who in 2024 sent $8,479.7 million in family remittances to the country, representing 23% of GDP. Along with the Venezuelans, 23 Salvadorans alleged to be gang members were deported, who are also now in CECOT.
