El Salvador officials say deported migrants in notorious jail are Trump's problem, not theirs

Independent

08-07-2025

El Salvador's government has directly contradicted Donald Trump's administration when it comes to who, exactly, is responsible for the deported migrants locked up in that country's prisons.
In high-profile legal battles at the heart of Trump's anti-immigration agenda, administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the government is powerless to bring them back because those deportees are no longer in U.S. custody.
But El Salvador has told the United Nations that the country is not responsible for them. 'The jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these people lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,' according to Salvadoran authorities.
The bombshell statement was included in court filings in a legal challenge against the president's use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport more than 130 alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador's brutal Terrorism Confinement Center, where Trump has also mulled sending U.S. citizens.
El Salvador 'has only facilitated the use of Salvadoran prison infrastructure for the reception and custody of persons detained within the scope of the justice system and law enforcement of another State,' authorities told the U.N.
Those statements were in response to a U.N. inquiry on behalf of four families who accused the Trump administration of disappearing a relative inside the Salvadoran prison in March. The Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to jail deportees in the Central American nation.
The Trump administration 'has sought to operate in the shadows without public transparency as it removes people from the country under false pretenses or without any process at all,' according to Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which serves as co-counsel in the case alongside the ACLU.
'This is a threat to every single American and is a threat to our democracy as a whole,' Perryman said in a statement to The Independent.
El Salvador's statements to the U.N. show that the administration has 'not been honest with the court or the American people,' she said.
The Independent has requested comment from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
Dozens of Venezuelans were deported to the jail on March 15 after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove Venezuelan nationals who were accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members.
The administration has also deported more than a dozen other alleged MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members to the jail using a different legal authority.
Government officials later admitted that 'many' of those Alien Enemies Act deportees did not have criminal records, and attorneys and family members say their clients and relatives — some of whom were in the country with legal permission and had pending cases on their asylum claims — have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration argues that the gang has carried out an 'invasion' of the United States under the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, despite reports from U.S. intelligence agencies disputing those claims.
Several federal judges have temporarily blocked immigration officials from deporting more Venezuelan migrants under that centuries-old wartime law, teeing up yet another Supreme Court battle challenging the president's sweeping executive actions.
The Supreme Court has already issued several rulings blocking the administration from summarily deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members while their lawyers scramble to challenge the allegations against them.
Immigrants detained in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act must have 'sufficient time and information' to contest their arrest and removal, according to the court's 7-2 ruling in May.
Lawyers for immigrants inside CECOT have argued for class-action relief, which would give them a chance to challenge the allegations against them.
'Significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations,' District Judge James Boasberg wrote last month.
So far, only one person deported from the United States to CECOT has made it back.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran father who was living in Maryland, was abruptly returned to the United States after a weeks-long court battle over his arrest and removal. Administration officials initially said he was deported by mistake before repeatedly insisting the U.S. government no longer had jurisdiction over him. Last month, he was returned to face a federal criminal indictment in Tennessee accusing him of smuggling immigrants across the country.
A recent court filing detailed for the first time what current conditions at the Salvadoran prison are like for the dozens of Venezuelan immigrants still inside.
Abrego Garcia was subject to 'severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture' at the facility, according to his attorneys.