US President Donald Trump’s homeland security chief visited El Salvador on Wednesday for talks on migrant deportations and to see a mega-prison housing Venezuelans expelled by his administration.
Relatives and Caracas say the 238 deported Venezuelans are innocent migrants, but Washington accuses them of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which it has designated a “terrorist” organization.
The deportations “sent a message to the world that America is no longer a safe haven for violent criminals,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media before her visit.
She welcomed the opportunity to see for herself “the detention center where the worst-of-the-worst criminals are housed,” on the first stop of a regional tour that will also include Colombia and Mexico.
Noem said she would meet Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to discuss how the United States “can increase the number of deportation flights and removals of violent criminals from the US.”
Trump invoked rarely used US wartime legislation to fly the Venezuelans to El Salvador on March 16, without the migrants being afforded any kind of court hearing.
The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order, and the men were taken in chains, their heads freshly shorn, to El Salvador’s maximum security “Terrorism Confinement Center” (CECOT).
On Monday, a law firm hired by Caracas filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding justification be provided for the migrants’ continued detention.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the motion seeks the release of countrymen he described as having been kidnapped.
According to the White House, Washington paid the Bukele administration around $6 million for the detention of the deportees.
– ‘Dangerous step’ –
Rights group Amnesty International said the mass expulsion “represents not only a flagrant disregard of the United States’ human rights obligations, but also a dangerous step toward authoritarian practices.”
It said there was “a clear and troubling connection” between Bukele’s methods and the recent US actions, as “both rely on a lack of due process and the criminalization of individuals based on discriminatory criteria.”
Bukele is hailed at home for his crackdown on violent crime — with tens of thousands of suspected gangsters sent to the maximum security CECOT facility.
Human rights groups have criticized the drive for a wide range of alleged abuses.
Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro will accompany Noem on the visit to CECOT, considered the largest prison in Latin America.
Guarded by soldiers and police, the jail has high electrified walls and a capacity for 40,000 inmates, who are denied family visits.
Human rights organizations have voiced concern that more innocent migrants risk being incarcerated at the prison.
“There is growing evidence that many people who were sent to El Salvador are not part of Tren de Aragua, and that they are exposed to serious human rights violations,” said Juan Pappier, deputy Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
“The main danger is that the US continues sending innocent people” to Salvadoran prisons, he told AFP.
Salvadoran authorities have arrested more than 86,000 suspected gang members under Bukele’s crackdown, although several thousand were released after being found innocent.
Collaborating with Trump “could be a risky move” for Bukele, despite the potential benefits, said Diego Chaves-Gonzalez, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in the United States.
“It could also generate tensions if a future US administration considers that these practices violate human rights or affect bilateral cooperation,” he told AFP.
Salvadoran analyst and academic Carlos Carcach said the cooperation would “reinforce the negative image” that the Central American country already has due to Bukele’s methods.
“What we are witnessing is the consolidation of an authoritarian regime in El Salvador with the support of the world’s greatest power,” he said.
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