By William Camacaro 

National Co-Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice

May 24 – Although the primary victims of El Salvador’s neo-fascist prison system are the Salvadorans themselves, hundreds of migrants have been illegally deported by the U.S. to these infamous prisons. Currently there are approximately 110,000 prisoners across the country; approximately 85,000 of these prisoners have been arrested since the start of the state of exception, an emergency measure that temporarily suspends certain constitutional rights and has been renewed 36 times by the National Assembly since its promulgation in March 2022. 

Seventy-eight percent of prisoners arrested during the ongoing state of exception have never seen a judge, and according to Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (SJH), at least 30,000 are innocent, and eight thousand have been freed. 

The so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), designed for approximately 40,000 people, currently holds around 84,000 prisoners. According to the NGO SJH, there are approximately 12,000 missing persons in El Salvador, many of whom are believed to be in this confinement center. 

Additionally, more than 410 prisoners have died since CECOT opened, some of whom had judicial orders for release. In this context of pervasive human rights violations, the Trump administration has partnered with the president of El Salvador to systematically hunt and then traffic migrants in the United States.

Read the entire article at afgj.org/immigration-as-a-political-weapon.