Trump Administration Violated Human Rights Law By Paying El Salvador To Imprison Immigrants

Legal Issues

from the par-for-Trump's-always-unlawful-course dept

This comes as no surprise. Pretty much everything about Trump’s extrajudicial rendering of undocumented migrants to a foreign hellhole prison has been awful, but rarely lawful, to twist a phrase that’s already pretty twisted.

Resurrecting a law last used to justify the mass incarceration of migrants during World War II, Trump 2.0’s acceleration of his previous administration’s expulsion of foreigners now involves multiple lawsuits, violated court orders, an absolutely inhumane refusal to facilitate the return of people who should never have been sent to El Salvador, and the deliberate refusal to recognize the due process rights those being expelled are entitled to.

That the Trump Administration is violating even more laws is about as surprising as water’s inherent wetness. This is what this administration is: a death cult that says it’s bringing back law and order while using both of those ideals as doormats for its jackboots.

Here’s Ariana Figueroa, reporting for News from the States, with the latest batch of unlawfulness from the Trump Administration.

The U.S. State Department is paying El Salvador $6 million to house hundreds of immigrants deported from the United States in an immense and brutal prison there, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

But a U.S. law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations. That has led those who wrote what’s known as the Leahy Law and enforced it for years to question the legality of the $6 million payment made as President Donald Trump carries out his campaign of mass deportation.

Of course, State Department head Marco Rubio claims nothing illegal is happening here, just the routine extrajudicial rendition of migrants the government has unilaterally alleged to be foreign gang members. Thanks to the utter lack of due process, those claims continue to go unchallenged by the only people who can actually challenge them. Instead, they’re hustled off El Salvador’s CECOT, which is the very reason this $6 million payment is illegal under the Leahy Law.

Here’s the State Department’s official statement on the matter:

“The Department is following all applicable laws related to foreign assistance, including the State Leahy Law,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in a statement to States Newsroom.

The spokesperson said the U.S. is engaged with El Salvador through foreign assistance to address unauthorized migration and human trafficking.

While it may be true existing foreign assistance agreements allow the US to deport migrants to El Salvador, the Leahy Law makes it pretty clear they can’t be housed in CECOT, at least not on the US government’s dime.

And the State Department definitely knows this because it wrote a report detailing the human rights violations occurring in El Salvadoran prisons. And there’s no reason to believe this doesn’t apply to the recently constructed CECOT, considering it’s run by the same government and its guards have been trained by those from existing prisons.

The State Department’s 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador noted there were credible reports from human rights organizations “of abuse and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards.”

Groups cited in the report interviewed people who were released from prisons in El Salvador and “reported systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks.”

Given that, it’s clear the Trump Administration is ignoring both the spirit and the letter of the law. There’s no reason to believe things have changed all that much at CECOT since 2023. But it’s clear this administration simply doesn’t care and definitely won’t be looking too hard at its favored drop-off point for renditioned migrants because ignorance is useful bliss when it comes to defending its actions against multiple lawsuits.

Unfortunately, breaking this law has almost zero consequences, at least for the moment. While this new information may be of some use in ongoing court cases, the law ultimately has to be enforced by Congress. And there’s no way that’s happening, not while the Republican party holds a majority.

Filed Under: cecot, donald trump, el salvador, immigration, kristi noem, leahy law, marco rubio, state department