CECOT: Trump has despatched tons of of immigrants to El Salvador mega-prison. This is what it’s like | EUROtoday

El Salvador’s mega-prison, the centerpiece of its controversial anti-crime technique, has turn out to be the newest holding floor for US deportees.

Hundreds of immigrants, alleged by US authorities to be members of Venezuela’s infamous Tren de Aragua gang, have been transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) on Sunday.

This transfer comes as a part of a $6 million settlement between the Trump administration and El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, offering the US with a 12 months’s price of detention companies.

The CECOT, opened in 2023, stands as a stark image of Bukele’s iron-fisted strategy to crime. Within its partitions, inmates are denied entry to visitation, recreation, and schooling.

The switch of the immigrants to the ability occurred regardless of a federal decide’s order briefly halting deportations below an 18th-century wartime declaration concentrating on Venezuelan gang members.

The settlement and subsequent switch spotlight the Trump administration’s continued hardline stance on immigration, leveraging El Salvador’s penal system as a device in its deportation efforts.

Here is what to know in regards to the facility and why it’s getting used for immigrants.

What is the CECOT?

Bukele ordered the mega-prison constructed as he started his marketing campaign towards El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022.

It opened a 12 months later within the city of Tecoluca, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of the capital.

The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and might maintain as much as 40,000 inmates.

Each cell can match 65 to 70 prisoners.

CECOT prisoners don’t obtain visits and are by no means allowed outside. The jail doesn’t supply workshops or academic packages to organize them to return to society after their sentences.

Occasionally, prisoners who’ve gained a stage of belief from jail officers give motivational talks. Prisoners sit in rows within the hall exterior their cells for the talks or are led via train regimens below the supervision of guards.

Bukele’s justice minister has mentioned that these held at CECOT would by no means return to their communities.

The jail’s eating halls, break rooms, gymnasium and board video games are for guards.

How many prisoners does El Salvador maintain?

The authorities doesn’t often replace the determine, however the human rights group Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had 110,000 individuals behind bars, together with these sentenced to jail and people nonetheless awaiting trial.

That was greater than double the 36,000 inmates that the federal government reported in April 2021, a 12 months earlier than Bukele ramped up his struggle towards crime.

Cristosal and different advocates have accused authorities of human rights violations.

Cristosal reported in 2024 that not less than 261 individuals had died in El Salvador’s prisons throughout the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited circumstances of abuse, torture and lack of medical consideration.

In slickly produced movies, the federal government has proven CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into widespread areas and made to sit down practically atop one another. Cells lack sufficient bunks for everybody.

Why have been immigrants despatched to CECOT?

The migrants have been deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used solely thrice in US historical past.

The legislation requires a president to declare the US is at conflict, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or take away foreigners who in any other case would have protections below immigration or legal legal guidelines. Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the US in invoking the wartime authority.

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless jail in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom have been searching for higher dwelling circumstances after their nation’s financial system got here undone final decade.

The Trump administration has not recognized the migrants deported, supplied any proof they’re in truth members of Tren de Aragua or that they dedicated any crimes within the US.

Video launched by El Salvador’s authorities on Sunday confirmed males exiting airplanes into an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear.

The males, who had with their fingers and ankles shackled, struggled to stroll as officers pushed their heads all the way down to have them bend on the waist.

The video additionally confirmed the lads being transported to CECOT in a big convoy of buses guarded by police and navy autos and not less than one helicopter.

The males have been proven kneeling on the bottom as their heads have been shaved earlier than they become the jail’s all-white uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and positioned in cells.