U.S. Human Rights Law Likely Violated in $6M Payment for El Salvador Prison, Experts Say
By Ariana Figueroa for States Newsroom
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.
The Trump administration on March 15 sent 261 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals aged 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
On March 30, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said another 17 nationals from El Salvador were sent to CECOT, again alleging gang ties. On Sunday, Rubio said 10 more men were sent to the prison in El Salvador, and noted how “the alliance between” the U.S. and El Salvador “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”
Tim Rieser, the main author of the Leahy Law while a longtime foreign policy aide to former U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the $6 million payment for those migrants’ incarceration for up to a year is likely a violation of the law.
“Sending migrants who have not been charged or convicted of any crime to the maximum-security terrorism prison in El Salvador, where they have no access to lawyers or their families, where they have no rights of due process, and with no idea if they will ever be released, held in cruel and shockingly degrading conditions, would certainly appear to violate the Leahy Law,” Rieser told States Newsroom.
“I don't think the Trump administration is upholding the Leahy Law or other laws that protect human rights,” he said.
Also deeply concerned is Charles Blaha, a former State Department official for 32 years who led the office responsible for vetting the Leahy Law worldwide, the Office of Security and Human Rights, from 2016 to 2023.
“CECOT is a facility that exposes prisoners to torture, and cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment and punishment,” Blaha said in an interview. “Under the Leahy Law, this should disqualify CECOT from receiving U.S. assistance."
Trump has also expressed that he is open to sending U.S. citizens to CECOT.
“I love that,” he said. “I don’t know what the law says on that.”
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is scheduled to visit with Trump at the White House on Monday.
Trump Administration Says Law Followed
The Trump administration plans to keep using the mega-prison as deportations continue under the Alien Enemies Act, top officials such as U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have pledged. Noem visited the prison in March.
“This facility is one of the tools in our toolkits that we will use,” Noem said during her tour of CECOT.
The State Department has denied any potential violations.
“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.
“As these countries continue to work with us in securing our borders and addressing illegal immigration, we will provide assistance as necessary in support of these collaborative efforts,” the spokesperson said. “Our goal is to ensure that our partners are well-equipped to handle the challenges they face, ultimately contributing to a more stable and secure region.”
The 1997 Leahy Law refers to two statutes – one applying to the State Department and one covering the Department of Defense – that prevent U.S. funds from being used for assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of gross violations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance or rape.
Payment Origin
The exact agency within the State Department that is paying out the $6 million in funding to CECOT is unclear and is a source of interest among Democrats in Congress.
It is likely coming out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America.
INL, among other things, gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to the Leahy Law, Isacson said.
The State Department did not answer detailed questions from States Newsroom as to whether the funds were coming from INL.
“And even if Leahy doesn't apply, the State Department has a duty to make sure that we're not turning over people, even if they're not our citizens, to places where they'll be mistreated or tortured,” Blaha said.
The State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor oversees an office that vets recipients of proposed foreign aid for potential gross human rights violations.
Fewer than 1% of requests are blocked after going through vetting through the Leahy Law compliance database. Those units that are blocked from funding are publicly posted on a case-by-case basis.
The most recent listing of publicly rejected units is from 2022, so there is no publicly available record of CECOT or the security units in charge of El Salvador's prisons being vetted because the prison was built in 2023. However, experts say the country’s record of prison management and publicly available details about the mega-prison mean it should be on the latest version of the list.
Beatings, Use of Electric Shocks
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.”
“The coalition alleged the treatment of prisoners constituted torture," according to the report.
The State Department in its report raised concerns about abusive physical conditions in El Salvador’s prisons, such as overcrowding.
While CECOT is not mentioned in the report by name, the report noted that El Salvador's government opened a new facility in January 2023 to hold up to 40,000 detainees, which apparently is now CECOT.
No Access to CECOT
No human rights group has had access to investigate the conditions of the CECOT prison, said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.
Goebertus Estrada has studied El Salvador’s prison system since the country’s Congress allowed President Bukele to issue a state of emergency in 2022 that suspended due process. It’s led to 1.4% of the population, about 84,000 people, being incarcerated.
“We have no reason to believe that the (CECOT) conditions are not similar to those in the rest of the El Salvadorian prison system,” she said. “It's administered by the same institution and the training of the guards is the same.”
She added that Human Rights Watch and other organizations have not documented anyone who is imprisoned at CECOT ever leaving. Additionally, attorneys and families are not allowed to visit.
“The government has explicitly said that this is a prison for the most reprehensible members of gangs, and that they're going to rot there,” Goebertus Estrada said.
More than 300 people have died in prisons across El Salvador in the last three years, Goebertus Estrada said.
That kind of record, WOLA’s (Washington’s Office on Latin America ) Isacson said, is something that should trigger the Leahy Law.
“The Salvadoran units in charge of the prison system... you think would come up because of extraordinarily credible allegations of about 300 people dying in the prison system in the last three years,” Isacson said.
Enforcement Up to Congress
Isacson said if the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is not enforcing the Leahy Law, then “it would be up to members of Congress to raise this” concern and potentially pull funding for the bureau in a future appropriations bill.
The most recent warnings about violations of the Leahy Law have been tied to the start of the 2023 war in Gaza and the role of U.S. security assistance to Israel units. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war.
“You had Israeli units, who would not have qualified, getting aid, and Democrats not really making any noise about it,” Isacson said. “The (Leahy) Law is mortally wounded.”
Democratic senators pressed DHS on April 8 to provide a copy of the contract between the U.S. and El Salvador. And House Democratic members, such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, are pushing for a congressional delegation to visit CECOT.
Former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, visited the prison in July 2024, calling CECOT “the solution” and adding “the good ideas in El Salvador actually have legs and can go to other places and help other people be safe and secure and hopeful and prosperous.”
U.S. Citizens at CECOT?
El Salvador’s Bukele has become a key ally in Trump's plans for mass deportations.
One of Rubio’s first visits to Latin America as secretary of State was to El Salvador. During that February trip, Rubio and Bukele talked about the possibility of detaining immigrants removed from the U.S. in El Salvador. Bukele also offered to imprison U.S. citizens.
“And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents,” according to the State Department’s readout of the trip.
Noem said during an April 9 border security conference that the Trump administration will continue to carry out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and maintain a strong partnership with El Salvador.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled April 7 that, for now, the Trump administration can continue use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those subject to the proclamation must have due process, including court hearings.
The high court did not rule on the merits of using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, when the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela. Until now, the Alien Enemies Act has only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.
The Venezuelan men who were sent to CECOT on March 15 under the wartime act, were not notified and/or given due process, federal trial and appellate judges have noted. Lawyers for many of the Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador said their clients were not involved in gangs and instead either had no criminal record or were in the middle of asylum hearings before an immigration judge.
‘Cruelty is the point’
During the April 9 conference, Noem touted her meeting with Bukele and said the kind of partnership exemplified by the use of the prison would continue.
However, the Trump administration has taken the position that those at the CECOT prison are no longer in U.S. custody. In a high-profile case, the Supreme Court April 10 ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of a wrongly deported Maryland man to the prison back to the U.S., but stopped short of requiring it.
“The idea of paying someone else to be your (Guantanamo Bay), is brand new,” Isacson said, referring to the U.S. Navy base in Cuba that houses foreign nationals accused of terrorism.
Noem visited CECOT after the Trump administration invoked the wartime law to send deportation flights to El Salvador. On camera Noem pointed behind her and warned the same would happen to immigrants who "commit crimes against the American people.”
Behind her were dozens of men who were stripped from the waist up, their tattoos visible behind bars.
Blaha was highly critical of Noem’s visit, where she took videos and pictures of the incarcerated men.
“Noem's stunt epitomizes cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment, which is why the administration loves it so much,” he said. “Sadly, the cruelty is the point with these guys.”
Republicans don't care about the Constitution or anyone's rights except those of their rich friends.