Deported and Extorted: How America Is Paying for El Salvador’s Brutal Prison System
A new report is documenting the pervasive and insidious system of abusive corruption inside the penal system of El Salvador.
Why should Americans care?
Because those are the notorious prisons that U.S. taxpayers are now subsidizing. Thanks to a controversial deal President Trump made earlier this year with his Salvadoran counterpart, autocratic President Nayib Bukele, the United States is paying Bukele millions of U.S. dollars (taxpayers’ dollars) so that El Salvador will accept deportees from the U.S. Since March, several hundred have been sent, including mostly Salvadorans and Venezuelans.
Most did not receive due process - ie, a fair hearing - and many had no criminal record at all, despite Trump administration claims to the contrary. (This includes the most infamous case of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration acknowledges it deported “by accident” but has fought tooth and nail to keep incarcerated - and now threatens to send to Uganda.)
Trump has also threatened to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador, which is possibly illegal, though illegality has done little to prevent such actions by this administration.
Salvadoran jails, and especially the mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, have long been the dreaded sites of torture, sexual assault, starvation and other abuse for the thousands crowded inside their walls.
Detainees, some but not all of whom are members of the cruel MS-13 gang, are captured and often sent into the prison never to reappear.
Now, add to this is new documentation of a system of bribery and extortion whereby guards, wardens, opportunistic lawyers and officials prey on desperate families seeking information on their incarcerated relatives or the chance at a few minutes of visitation.
The report, by a small but dogged 25-year-old human rights organization called Cristosal, was released this week and contains alarming testimony from former inmates, relatives and others to document the abuses that, among other fallout, impose financial and emotional burden on already impoverished families in dire straits.
Cristosal documents cases that expose how families of the detained men and women have been obliged to pay bribes, in money or in kind, or have been tricked into scams, all to be allowed to visit their relatives or secure better conditions for them.
The report can be read here.
CORRUPTION REGIME: THE HIDDEN BUSSINES OF EL SALVADOR’S PRISON SYSTEM
The corruption is made possible by Bukele’s increasingly authoritarian rule, Cristosal and numerous analysts argue. This includes a state of emergency that Bukele imposed three years ago, ostensibly as a security measure but one that has morphed into a regime of heavy-handed suppression with most civil rights suspended and a scourge of egregious human rights violations…
Under Bukele’s decree, more than 87,000 people have been arrested and hundreds have died while in custody. The lack of basic rights has led to impunity for abusive authorities within the prison system and a lack of transparency for the government’s actions. U.S. taxpayers are helping to pay for this prison system.
It is unclear by how much. Neither the Trump nor the Bukele government has released detailed accounting of what is being spent in the prisoner-transfer operation, which, according to Salvadoran sources, continues to this day, but under much more secretive circumstances.
Tracy Wilkinson.
Tracy Wilkinson is an award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent. She recently retired from the Los Angeles Times after 38 years covering dozens of countries, including much of Latin America, not to mention stints in Los Angeles and Washington DC