Prior Current Thread —> US Sends Immigrants to Salvadoran Prison

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Here is one example of information trickling out about a Venezuelan asylum seeker who has been sent to El Salvador to be imprisoned there without due process based on allegations of gang membership:

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Of course his lawyers are going to paint their client in as good a light as possible — maybe he is in a gang. But we don’t know because he was denied due process and sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Marco Rubio claims that an ICE official’s determination that this man is in a gang that Trump just declared a terrorist organization invading America overrides any due process rights because the Trump Administration has labeled all their decisions about who is in this gang as a “foreign policy” matter.
 
Here is one example of information trickling out about a Venezuelan asylum seeker who has been sent to El Salvador to be imprisoned there without due process based on allegations of gang membership:

IMG_5761.jpeg
IMG_5762.jpeg
IMG_5763.jpeg

Of course his lawyers are going to paint their client in as good a light as possible — maybe he is in a gang. But we don’t know because he was denied due process and sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Marco Rubio claims that an ICE official’s determination that this man is in a gang that Trump just declared a terrorist organization invading America overrides any due process rights because the Trump Administration has labeled all their decisions about who is in this gang as a “foreign policy” matter.

WSJ Editorial Board:


“… In any event, the Administration can appeal whatever ruling Judge Boasberg hands down, and the case will go up the appellate chain, perhaps as far as the Supreme Court. What the Administration can’t do is defy a court order without being lawless itself.

Also troubling is the U.S. reliance on Mr. Bukele, the Salvadoran president who has trampled due process in his war against crime. Gang violence is down and he’s popular, but his methods border on the barbaric. The country was desperate, but Mr. Bukele has destroyed independent legal institutions rather than restore the rule of law.

The U.S. is paying Mr. Bukele $6 million to handle the 300 gang members, and Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have praised him as if he’s an American hero. “We will not forget!” Mr. Trump declared.

As our Mary O’Grady has reported, Mr. Bukele gave 60,000 “tourist” visas to Ecuadorans and 32,000 to Indians in 2023 to enter his country. The migrants then paid cartels to take them to the American border. That contributed to the Biden-era migrant surge.

It isn’t clear why Mr. Trump had to get in a prison bed with Mr. Bukele when he could have sent the gang members to Guantanamo for immigration hearings and American due process. …”
 

WSJ Editorial Board:


“… In any event, the Administration can appeal whatever ruling Judge Boasberg hands down, and the case will go up the appellate chain, perhaps as far as the Supreme Court. What the Administration can’t do is defy a court order without being lawless itself.

Also troubling is the U.S. reliance on Mr. Bukele, the Salvadoran president who has trampled due process in his war against crime. Gang violence is down and he’s popular, but his methods border on the barbaric. The country was desperate, but Mr. Bukele has destroyed independent legal institutions rather than restore the rule of law.

The U.S. is paying Mr. Bukele $6 million to handle the 300 gang members, and Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have praised him as if he’s an American hero. “We will not forget!” Mr. Trump declared.

As our Mary O’Grady has reported, Mr. Bukele gave 60,000 “tourist” visas to Ecuadorans and 32,000 to Indians in 2023 to enter his country. The migrants then paid cartels to take them to the American border. That contributed to the Biden-era migrant surge.

It isn’t clear why Mr. Trump had to get in a prison bed with Mr. Bukele when he could have sent the gang members to Guantanamo for immigration hearings and American due process. …”

BACKGROUND on BuKELE:

GIFT LINK —> https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-f...df?st=AU4p7t&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

“… In February 2020, less than a year after he took office, Mr. Bukele brought soldiers in battle gear with assault rifles into the Legislative Assembly to intimidate opposition parties when they challenged an executive loan proposal. In May 2021, immediately after his party won control of the legislature, he fired and forcibly removed the Constitutional Court and replaced it with his own handpicked judges.

In 2022 he declared a “state of exception,” suspending civil liberties, due process and oversight of budgets and public contracts. Three years later democratic norms remain suspended, the fisc is a black box, and a new law makes media investigations not approved by the state punishable by a fine or jail time. For Bukele political opponents, silence is survival.

There have been arrest quotas and police carry out personal vendettas. Most of the detained never learn what they’re accused of or the identity of their accusers. Under the law up to 900 people can be convicted in a single trial.

Some 8,000 Bukele prisoners have been released after captivity of as much as a year because they were so obviously innocent that their cases embarrassed the regime. Their stories are gruesome.

A 2023 State Department human-rights report on El Salvador found “credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention” and “serious problems with the independence of the judiciary.”

This could be Cuba. Yet Mr. Rubio called Mr. Bukele’s offer to house U.S. convicts in his dungeons “extraordinary.” …”
 

Beatings, overcrowding and food deprivation: US deportees face distressing human rights conditions in El Salvador’s mega-prison

“… For the past three years, Bukele has governed with few checks and balances under a self-imposed “state of exception.” This emergency status has allowed Bukele to suspend many rights as he wages what he calls a “war on gangs.”

The crackdown manifests in mass arbitrary arrests of anyone who fits stereotypical demographic characteristics of gang members, like having tattoos, a prior criminal record or even just “looking nervous.”

As a result of the ongoing mass arrests, El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The proportion of its population that El Salvador incarcerates is more than triple that of the U.S. and double that of the next nearest country, Cuba.

… But maintaining this popularity has involved, it is widely alleged, manipulating crime statistics, attacking journalists who criticize him and denying involvement in a widely documented secret gang pact that unraveled just before the start of the state of exception.

… Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has come at a huge cost to human rights – and nowhere is this seen more than in El Salvador’s prison system.

Bukele has ordered a communication blackoutbetween incarcerated people and their loved ones. This means no visits, no letters and no phone calls.

… Incarcerated Salvadorans are packed into grossly overcrowded cells, beaten regularly by prison personnel and denied medicines even when they are available. Inmates are frequently subjected to punishments including food deprivation and electric shocks. Indeed, a U.S. State Department’s 2023 country report on El Salvador noted the“harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.”

The human rights organization Cristosal estimates that hundreds have died from malnutrition, blunt force trauma, strangulation and lack of lifesaving medical treatment.

Often, their bodies are buried by government workers in mass graves without notifying families.

Although El Salvador is a signatory to the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture, Amnesty International concluded after multiple missions to the country and interviews with victims and their families that there is “systemic use of torture” in Salvadoran prisons.

Likewise, a case-by-case study by Cristosal, which included forensic analysis of exhumed bodies of people who died in prison, determined in 2024 that “torture has become a state policy.” …”
 

What to know about the El Salvador mega-prison where Trump sent deported Venezuelans​

The US has sent hundreds of migrants to El Salvador to be held without trial in Cecot, a controversial prison known for its harsh conditions


“… The Trump administration deported 261 people to El Salvador on 15 March. For 137 of them, the US government justified the move under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, saying the men were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua but providing few details about their cases.

A US official said in a court filing that “many” of those 137 has no US convictions but still posed a serious threat.

Those people along with 101 additional Venezuelans were sent to Cecot for a one-year term that can be renewed, Bukele said. The US government paid El Salvador about $6m to receive the deportees, the White House said.

The remaining 23 deportees were Salvadoran gang members, the White House said. …”
 

Defiance and Threats in Deportation Case Renew Fear of Constitutional Crisis​

Legal scholars say that the nation has reached a tipping point and that the right question is not whether there is a crisis, but rather how much damage it will cause.

GIFT LINK 🎁 —>Defiance and Threats in Deportation Case Renew Fear of Constitutional Crisis


“…The line between arguments in support of a claimed right to disobey court orders and outright defiance has become gossamer thin, they said, again raising the question of whether the latest clash between President Trump and the judiciary amounts to a constitutional crisis.

Legal scholars say that is no longer the right inquiry. Mr. Trump is already undercutting the separation of powers at the heart of the constitutional system, they say, and the right question now is how it will transform the nation.

“If anyone is being detained or removed based on the administration’s assertion that it can do so without judicial review or due process,” said Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia, “the president is asserting dictatorial power and ‘constitutional crisis’ doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation.”

Mr. Trump raised the stakes on Tuesday by calling for the impeachment of the judge who issued the order, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, describing him on social media as a “Radical Left Lunatic.”

The president did so even as the issues at hand have just started to be tested in a case that seems headed to the Supreme Court. …”
 
NOTE -

I AM GOING TO LEAVE THIS TH READ OPEN TO FOCUS ON NEWS ON THE EL SALVADOR PRISON AND RELATED COURT CHALLENGES and start a new general thread for other current events sharing.
 


I would say these affidavits assert (not confirm) the claims therein, but the assertions are unsurprising and deeply troubling. Some of the people swept up in this madness were here seeking asylum from this kind of madness in Venezuela.

Under the Trump Administration, the USA is one of the bad guys.
 

Trump Administration Sends a New Group of Migrants to Guantánamo Bay​

Officials have said most of the people sent to the U.S. base are members of a Venezuelan gang but have not offered evidence to support that claim.


“An Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight from El Paso transported about 20 people, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

The transfer put migrants on the base for the first time since March 11, when the administration brought 40 men it had temporarily held there back to the United States. That transfer occurred a few days before a court hearing in a pair of lawsuits challenging the legality of President Trump’s policy of holding immigration detainees there.

At the hearing, Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to issue an order barring further transfers to the base and expressed doubt that the plaintiffs would succeed in the cases because at the time no migrants remained at Guantánamo. …”
 
According to google, the DOJ met today's deadline, giving Boasberg the documents to review in camera.

Somehow I doubt this is going to go as they expect.
 

Administration’s Details on Deportation Flights ‘Woefully Insufficient,’ Judge Says​

In an angry order, the judge, James E. Boasberg, told the Trump administration to explain why he should not find that officials had violated his instructions for the flights to return to the United States.


“… In an angrily written order, the judge, James E. Boasberg, told the administration to explain to him by Tuesday why officials had not violated his instructions when they allowed two flights of immigrants to continue on to El Salvador even after he directed the planes to return to the United States.

Judge Boasberg also called out efforts by the Justice Department to repeatedly stonewall his attempts to get information about the timing of the flights.

“The government again evaded its obligations,” he wrote, adding that the Justice Department’s most recent filing about the flights was “woefully insufficient.”


He originally instructed the Justice Department to provide him with that data by noon on Wednesday. He then extended that deadline by another day after department lawyers asked for more time as they considered whether to invoke a rare doctrine called the state secrets privilege in an effort to get out of turning over the information.

On Thursday, the government filed court papers to Judge Boasberg under seal, but hours later he revealed in his order that the papers “repeated the same general information about the flights” that department lawyers had already given him in previous court filings and hearings. …”
 

WSJ Editorial Board:


“… In any event, the Administration can appeal whatever ruling Judge Boasberg hands down, and the case will go up the appellate chain, perhaps as far as the Supreme Court. What the Administration can’t do is defy a court order without being lawless itself.

Also troubling is the U.S. reliance on Mr. Bukele, the Salvadoran president who has trampled due process in his war against crime. Gang violence is down and he’s popular, but his methods border on the barbaric. The country was desperate, but Mr. Bukele has destroyed independent legal institutions rather than restore the rule of law.

The U.S. is paying Mr. Bukele $6 million to handle the 300 gang members, and Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have praised him as if he’s an American hero. “We will not forget!” Mr. Trump declared.

As our Mary O’Grady has reported, Mr. Bukele gave 60,000 “tourist” visas to Ecuadorans and 32,000 to Indians in 2023 to enter his country. The migrants then paid cartels to take them to the American border. That contributed to the Biden-era migrant surge.

It isn’t clear why Mr. Trump had to get in a prison bed with Mr. Bukele when he could have sent the gang members to Guantanamo for immigration hearings and American due process. …”
WSJ seems to be pulling more than their fair share of the weight lately. Perhaps the only thing I’ve been positively surprised by over the past 2 months.
 
Bukele is an authoritarian with zero respect for the rule of law. Trump finds him to be a regional soulmate - a Central American mini-me.
 
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