El Salvador says US has ‘jurisdiction and legal responsibility’ over migrants deported to its Cecot prison

The government of El Salvador has admitted to investigators from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the Trump administration maintains control over the more than 200 Venezuelan men deported in March to the Salvadoran maximum-security mega-prison known as Cecot (Center for the Confinement of Terrorism). “The actions of the State of El Salvador have been limited to the implementation of a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another State, through which it has facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure for the custody of persons detained within the scope of the justice system and law enforcement of that other State,” say the Salvadoran authorities in a response to the UN, which was included in a filing made on Monday by lawyers representing more than 100 of the deportees in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

“The jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters,” it adds.

Ever since the deportations were carried out in mid-March despite a last-minute court order against it, the U.S. administration has maintained that its hands are tied when it comes to returning the men to American territory. Its explanation is that they are outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts and therefore no longer have access to their due process rights or other constitutional guarantees. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said much the same thing at the time in an X post mocking Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the planes carrying the deported Venezuelan migrants to turn around. “Oopsie... too late,” Bukele wrote in response to a post about the court order.

Around that same time, the Trump-Bukele deal became known, under which the United States would pay $6 million for El Salvador to house 300 migrants. The agreement was also controversial because Trump invoked a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly expel men he accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran MS-13.

Since then, a series of lawsuits have been filed against these deportations, including most notably the case of Kilmar Abrego García, who was returned to the United States in early June, and whose case remains open in the courts. Furthermore, several international organizations, including the UN, have launched their own investigations into the expulsions to the Central American country, which have been described as a “mass enforced disappearance.”

The lawyers representing the migrants in the case against the U.S. administration, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, have pointed to this evidence as proof that the habeas corpus petitions filed in connection with this case should be answered by U.S. authorities, who have so far claimed they can do nothing. “El Salvador has confirmed what we and everyone else understood: it is the United States that controls what happens to the Venezuelans languishing at CECOT. Remarkably the U.S. government didn’t provide this information to us or the court,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt told the AP. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice, the White House, nor the Department of Homeland Security have so far commented on the matter.

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