El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele intends to double the size of the notorious mega-prison that’s currently holding U.S. deportees, according to a new report.
Bukele told Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month that he plans to build out the El Salvador prison known as CECOT, which has been attacked by human rights groups as a “tropical gulag” rife with abuses, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The prison, which can house up to 40,000 inmates, in recent weeks began holding hundreds of immigrants that the Trump administration alleges are members of a Venezuelan gang, a Salvadoran father transported there in error who courts have ordered be returned to the U.S., and others as the Trump administration cracks down on its deportation operation in defiance of U.S. court orders, according to judges.
“We have no plans to bring them back, this is a long-term solution,” Noem told the Journal after her visit with Bukele in March. “He has plans to double the size. He has 80-plus acres there that he’s going to continue to build on.”
The revelation comes days after Trump asked about El Salvador expanding its prison facilities as he has threatened to send American citizens who have broken the law to the foreign prison.
The “homegrowns” are next, he told Bukele. “You gotta build about five more places … It’s not big enough.”
That same day, Bukele was asked about whether he would release Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to CECOT last month after the Trump administration claimed with no evidence that he was a MS-13 gang member. The administration has since admitted Abrego Garcia, who has an American court order granting him permission to live in the U.S., was sent to the prison in error.
Last week, the Supreme Court called on the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return to the United States after a lower court judge earlier this month demanded that the government return him to the United States, calling his removal a “grievous error” and his detention at the brutal prison “wholly lawless.”
Though government attorneys have admitted that Abrego Garcia’s removal was due to an “administrative” mistake, they have refused to take steps to bring him back to the United States. They have argued that they understood the Supreme Court’s order to mean that Abrego Garcia may be allowed to re-enter the U.S. if and when he’s sent back by Salvadoran authorities.
But Trump officials have also said that Abrego Garcia would then be immediately sent back to the prison in El Salvador.
On Monday, El Salvador’s smiling president said “of course” he would not release Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The Trump administration is reportedly paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison those shipped from the U.S., and claims it has no way to convince Bukele to release Abrego Garcia.
“The question is preposterous,” Bukele told reporters as he sat next to Trump. “ How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Maryland Senator Chris van Hollen on Wednesday traveled to CECOT to assist with Abrego Garcia’s release, but his requests to visit and talk to him were denied, he said.
Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis on Tuesday ordered that Trump administration officials must testify about what steps, If any, they have taken to comply with the Supreme Court order. “There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” she warned.
On Wednesday another federal judge found that Trump administration officials could be held in criminal contempt for “willful disregard” of his orders to turn planes around carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members summarily deported to the brutal Salvadoran prison under the president’s use of a wartime law.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg warned he could refer the matter for prosecution next week if the administration fails to return the men to U.S. custody
Noem, meanwhile, was sharply criticized after filming a video last month in front of a crowded prison cell while she warned that those who enter the U.S. illegally could wind up in the prison.
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