El Salvador's penal system
March 20, 2025
The U.S. deportations have thrust El Salvador’s prisons back into the international spotlight — three years after President Nayib Bukele declared an ongoing state of exception.
The 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador Bukele have been locked up in an infamous maximum security mega prison — the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). “With no access to the courts, they are in a legal black hole,” reports the Washington Post.
Cristosal director Noah Bullock writes in Foreign Policy about the systematic human rights abuses that should be a red-light to those who see El Salvador’s penitentiaries as a solution: “Under the state of exception, El Salvador’s prisons have become a system where undesirables are exiled in the model of penal colonies favored by empires and autocrats.”
While the U.S. Trump administration said deportees to El Salvador were criminals, “in recent days, a succession of Venezuelan families have gone public to demand the release of their loved-ones: young working men whose main “crimes” appear to have been their nationality and having tattoos that US immigration authorities deemed a sign of affiliation to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Experts in South American organized crime reject the idea that tattoos are a meaningful indicator of gang membership in Venezuela,” reports the Guardian.
The U.S. Justice Department has resisted a federal judge’s demand for more information about flights that took deportees to El Salvador, arguing on yesterday that the court should end its “continued intrusions” into the authority of the executive branch, reports the Associated Press.
And “the Trump administration’s decision to return a high-profile gang boss facing terrorism charges to El Salvador as part of a controversial effort to deport hundreds of Venezuelan citizens could signal the US government’s willingness to compromise its longstanding MS13 crackdown in favor of mass deportation,” reports InSight Crime. (See Tuesday’s post.)
Migration
The Trump administration is evaluating plans to militarize a buffer zone along a stretch of the country’s southern border and empower active-duty U.S. troops to temporarily hold migrants who cross into the United States illegally, reports the Washington Post.
Several Caribbean leaders are seeking clarity after a draft of a U.S. government list of over 40 countries which could face sweeping travel restrictions was made public, reports Reuters. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
Panama
Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino said today that he didn't place any value on reports the U.S. military is looking into options for ensuring full U.S. access to the Panama Canal, since these reports came from unnamed sources, reports Reuters. (See last Friday’s post.)
Mexico
Mexico’s attorney general reported irregularities in an investigation by state authorities into an alleged cartel killing site and training camp at a ranch in the western state of Jalisco, reports the Associated Press.
Argentina
Argentina’s Lower House approved President Javier Milei’s executive order allowing the administration to seal a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund. “The decree Milei sent last week does not contain any details of the new deal, meaning deputies voted without knowing how much money the lender will disburse or whether the nation will be required to change its monetary policy as a condition of the loan,” writes Facundo Iglesia in the Buenos Aires Herald.
Milei “has made heroic progress on the fiscal and inflation fronts. But by forsaking dollarization and keeping currency and capital controls in place, Milei has jeopardized his anti-inflationary program and discouraged a potential investment boom,” argues Arturo C. Porzecanski in America’s Quarterly.
Cuba
Cuba’s state-run media cheered the Trump administration's decision to gut U.S.-funded media outlets that broadcast news about Cuba to their predominantly Cuban audience, often providing a counterpoint to that of state-run providers on the island, reports Reuters.
People
“Adana Omágua Kambeba fought to become one of the country’s first Indigenous woman doctors. Now she wants to bring the worlds of traditional and western medicine closer – and help Amazonian communities in the process.” - Guardian