The U.S. has deported 10 more alleged Latin American gang members to El Salvador, where they will likely be detained in a notorious maximum-security prison accused of numerous human rights abuses.
“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X on Sunday, praising the collaboration between the Trump administration and Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele as an “example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”
The Independent has contact the Departments of State and Homeland Security for more information on the individuals.
The flights come as the administration faces criticism over mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man, to El Salvador, despite an explicit court order barring his removal to that country.
Federal courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, have mandated that the administration facilitate returning the man to the U.S., though the administration has only provided sparse updates that he’s “alive and secure” in the Salvadoran prison, and has argued it doesn’t have the power or obligation to secure his release.
“These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President [Nayib] B[ukele] and his Government, They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!” President Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday.
Bukele will meet with Trump at the White House on Monday.
Since March, the Trump administration has sent hundreds of alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, and a smaller number of alleged members of MS-13, a Salvadoran group, to El Salvador, where they have been detained in CECOT, a sprawling prison complex rife with controversy.
Attorneys say many of the men sent from the U.S. to the prison have no gang ties or criminal records, and family members described only learning the fate of the deportees when they saw media images of the men being manhandled and shaved inside the Salvadoran facility by masked guards.
The U.S. invoked the centuries-old wartime Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport the alleged Venezuelan gang members, though the administration has since admitted that “many” Venezuelans sent to El Salvador do not have criminal histories, and media investigations suggest as many as 75 percent of the Venezuelans initially sent to the prison lacked records.
Homeland Security officials have instead relied in part on tattoos to allege these mens’ gang ties, though gang experts say the Venezuelan group isn’t known for using identifying tattoos, and artists who created the images that appeared in an immigration handbook on the alleged gang tattoos told The Independent their work had no relation to Tren de Aragua.
The administration has also been accused of defying a court order to turn around deportation flights headed for El Salvador in the midst of a legal challenge against Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.
On Monday, a divided Supreme Court allowed the White House to keep using the emergency law, which was last invoked to carry out Japanese internment in WWII, though those being removed would now be “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
Inside CECOT, cells have no sheets, pillows, or mattresses, and inmates are held inside them for 23.5 hours a day, with the lights turned on 24/7.
Those held in the prison’s solitary confinement wing reportedly sleep on concrete beds and sit in pitch black rooms, but for a small hole in the ceiling.
Nayib Bukele and his officials have described the prison as something of a living execution chamber, sending inmates, many thousands of whom critics say were arbitrarily arrested, to facilities from which they have little hope of return.
“We don’t have a death penalty, so we have to imprison them all,” Bukele said last year.
His security minister told CNN last year it would be “stupid” to ever release inmates serving in the terror prison.
The administration has signaled it will expand its use of the Alien Enemies Act to alleged members of MS-13.
Trump also said this week he “loves” idea of sending American “wiseguys” to prisons in El Salvador.
