In a last minute decision, the United States Supreme Court foiled Donald Trump’s desire to send a second group of incarcerated and mostly Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
The early Saturday morning stay blocked a second wave of men—identified by the Trump administration as members of the MS-13 gang—from being airlifted to what has been called the most unforgivable prison in the world. Included among those shipped to CECOT prison in the first deportation flight in March was a 19-year-old Venezuelan immigrant arrested in Aurora.
The attorney for Nixon Azuaje-Perez said ICE mistakenly arrested the teenager based upon faulty evidence linking him to the Tren de Aragua gang. But the young man had been living in the same Aurora apartment complex that had been rife with what authorities said was gang—Tren de Aragua violence.
While Azuaje-Perez is among the few whose name is known to be among the 238 that ICE rounded up and flew to El Salvador’s infamous prison, it is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, who is now best known among the incarcerated.
But each new inmate in the prison that El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele boasts is inescapable, has the same defense for release and return to the U.S. None of the 238 was afforded due process, a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
Due process is the requirement that a person be afforded all legal rights, including the right to a fair trial, the right to know the charges and the right to be heard. Many of the families of the men arrested and sent to CECOT say they were neither gang members nor facing charges for any other offenses.
The A.C.L.U. had frantically been trying to find courts willing to stay the order to pack the men off to CECOT. “These men were close to spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had any due process,” A.C.L.U. attorney Lee Gelernt told the New York Times.
Pueblo’s Retired 10th Judicial District Chief Judge Dennis Maes said he was shocked but also not shocked by the President’s actions. “Due process is at the very heart of our system of Juris Prudence. It affords (everyone) the opportunity to determine whether the government is being fair in its treatment of an individual.”
The men earmarked for deportation to CECOT prison were being housed at the Texas Bluebonnet Correctional Facility in Anson, Texas. The closest city to Anson is Abilene. Had the Supreme Court not interceded, the men would have joined ICE’s previous detainees at the prison whose dark reputation, many say, falls short of its reality.
The prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo but most often referred to by the acronym CECOT, was built to combat gang violence that had engulfed El Salvador in the second decade of the new century and at the order of President Bukele. It opened in 2023 and holds as many as 40,000 inmates, many who are members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs. It has been referred to as “a black hole for human rights.”
Inmates are confined in cells that hold up to 100 inmates; each inmate’s head is shaved every five days; clothes are simple tee shirts, shorts and rubber clogs; lights remain on 24 hours a day; bedding is a metal rack; there are no pillows and sheets; each cell has a single open toilet and a concrete basin for drinking water; all reading material except the Bible is banned; correspondence is forbidden; inmates are denied outdoor access; visitors are forbidden, including lawyers; there are no rehabilitation programs.
One United Nations observer allowed to view the facility to determine if there was torture being carried out said CECOT was built to “dispose of people without formally applying the death penalty.” El Salvador’s President said the only way an inmate will leave is “inside of a coffin.”
Demands for freedom for Garcia, who is married to an American and has three children, and others that may have been unjustly ‘disappeared,’ have sprouted up across the country.
Garcia’s Senator, Maryland Democrat Chris van Hollen, did secure a visit with Garcia. Pictures of the visit, one showing Garcia in civilian clothes and sitting poolside with the Senator, have gone viral. But the senator returned home without the father of three. Garcia has since been transferred to another, less restrictive El Salvador prison.
Garcia came to the U.S. in 2006 and, says his family, has no gang affiliation. But two judges, in separate rulings, determined that he did. They based their opinions on information gleaned from a confidential informant. But Garcia was allowed to stay because he said deportation would make him a target of MS-13 gangs.
Trump’s desire to deport this group of Venezuelans to El Salvador, which the U.S. pays $6 million a year to house, may only be a temporary delay. He and his lawyers believe they have the right based on the Alien Enemies Act, a Revolutionary War statute and the same law used to inter Japanese Americans in WWII. But the law, say A.C.L.U. attorneys, is only applicable during a time of war or military invasion.
It remains unclear how long the Supreme Court ruling will be in place. But Trump has a track record of defying the courts and very well, say his critics, could challenge the Supreme Court. They also say, if he takes that route, no one should be surprised.“We absolutely need the courts,” said Judge Maes. “But he (Trump) has tested every single boundary. I’m just appalled by this; I never thought our democracy would be challenged. The rule of law is sacrosanct.”
