U.S. and El Salvador Say They Won't Return Man Who Was Mistakenly Deported
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Abduct someone. Move them faster than their family, friends, and legal counsel can possibly follow. Get them on a plane to El Salvador. Put them in the CECOT hole. And then say "Aw geez, they're in Salvadorian jurisdiction now, nothing we can do."
Yes, Abrego Garcia is a Salvadorian citizen. He also had been explicitly granted protected status to remain in the US.
Nothing about this process prevents its application against US citizens. The detainee is pushed through a one-way valve faster than due process can be applied. If we do not protect the rule of law for immigrants who have been granted the right to stay here, we will also lose the rule of law for citizens.
Do you have any links?
And when transfered you get diesel therapy. Every new prison situation presents threat to life risks, so being introduced to potentially a dozen new situations (you get placed in a new prison situation each nights stopover) during transit is something US inmates try to minimize (unfortunately timed transfers (oops, BOP mistake, sorry, we didn't mean for you to miss meals, just a timing mistake) causing missing breakfast/dinner so you often get just a single bologna sandwiches/orange in a day, plus the whole pissing yourself, inability to wipe yourself because you are shackled, and you aren't getting unshackled to use the toilet on your 12 hour ride, etc, etc google Diesel Therapy).
https://documentedny.com/2025/04/08/diesel-therapy-ice-depor... https://www.vice.com/sv/article/diesel-v11n2/
To the point that they are willing to collaborate across states to rotate them around.
Confidence and morality are the underlying feelings across this part of the govt then, I am guessing. As a processed, your only solution now is to hope you get placed in the right moral category. That is a risk the processor is confident enough to take.
Thank you for the links.
The system of government our Constitution requires is rigid, expensive, and requires constant vigilance. We have chosen to go the window dressing route for a long time (just like Congress has chosen the easiest path) and that's something coming back on us now.
The question is whether these folks would be better off if the abductors were obstructed. They’re no longer operating under the colour of law. Disabling vehicles, possible officers, or otherwise creating chaos that makes moving victims around starts to make sense. Because if the other side isn’t playing by the rules, it really doesn’t make sense for you to.
This appearance keeps a lot of folks on the fence. They want the big moment where it's super obvious that it's time to act. It doesn't work like that. This is how fascists gnaw away at the constructs that enable free societies.
> Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.
> “So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.
> “Jawohl!” Hitler replied.
Those people need to be actively reminded that once we discard due process and rule of law, your status does not matter. If the administration chooses to target you, you'll be on the other side of the valve before anyone can meaningfully intervene on your behalf to assert your rights.
There's a phrase "you can beat the time, but you can't beat the ride," meaning you can't do much about it if the police want to put you in jail for the night/weekend. They're going to subdue you, they're going to handcuff you, and they're going to book you. The validity of the charges or chance of successful prosecution does not matter, you're going to jail. You might bond out or get released as soon as you see a magistrate judge, but in the meantime you're going to jail.
If the "ride" extends all the way to a facility that is beyond the jurisdiction of US courts, then the ride and the time are one and the same. The executive is not only the enforcer but also the judge and jury. It is absolutely broken from a constitutional perspective.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-house-confirms-trump-is...
At least the government didn’t pretend they can’t they just don’t want to
True, but important to know that Republican congress stopped every attempt he made. He still got the number of prisoners down from 242 to 55.
The 2009-2011 Congress was Democratically controlled.
> Democrats fail to do something
> it's because they universally wanted to but were obstructed.
Doesn't really work in a post-Trump era. They could've done whatever they wanted to, if they were willing to try.
He could have and should have done more, but the blame for that one mostly falls on Congress (at the time firmly controlled by Democrats) blocking said EO
What is happening here is the US government sending people to a gulag operated by a foreign nation and then insisting that that's the end of it. There can be no meaningful challenge of your unlawful detainment. With CECOT your only opportunity to vindicate your rights is at the literal moment that you are grabbed off the street.
One of the milestones in the fall of human rights in the west.
Isn't the Salvador cohort literally mostly random people?
EDIT: by "random people" I meant the ones deported from the US, not people arrested in El Salvador.
El Salvador: random people accused of being part of Tren de Aragua
So Mr. Garcia will be surrounded by a gigantic cohort of legitimate, full body 'MS-13' tattood, hard hitting gang members. If he wasn't in a gang before he likely is now, or getting the living shit beat out of him because he lacks gang protection.
Nevertheless I strongly believe if the US had just dumped him in a village in El Salvador none of this would be news. They have done that to US citizens and hardly anyone noticed. The real story is he was sent into an experimental contract foreign prison at the behest of the government and the violation of the withholding order provides the wedge to challenge it and eventually wedge to make it easier to challenge more happenings at CECOT. Even if he is an MS13 member, the government never used due process to withdraw the withholding of removal order that they are claiming should no longer exist.
* In March 2019, Prince George's County, Maryland, police arrested Abrego Garcia and three other men in a Home Depot parking lot, where they were seeking work as day laborers.[2][19] One of the men claimed Abrego Garcia was a "gang member," but The Atlantic reported that, according to court filings, the man offered no proof and police said they did not believe him.[19] Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime in connection to his arrest.[20]
Police handed custody of Abrego Garcia over to ICE for deportation proceedings. In those proceedings, the government claimed that he was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang because "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie" and a confidential informant claimed that he was active with an MS-13 group based in New York,[2] where he has never lived.[16] ICE relied on information from a form that was filled out by a local police officer who was suspended not long after for "giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker", and thus was unavailable when Abrego Garcia's lawyer sought more information.[21] Roger Parloff of Lawfare notes that since neither the officer nor the informant were cross-examined, the accusation went through two layers of hearsay to reach the immigration court. An immigration judge determined that the informant's claim[22] was sufficient evidence for the purpose of denying Abrego Garcia's bond request; another judge upheld that ruling on appeal, saying the claim was not clearly wrong.[18] However, no court has ever made a "full adjudication" of this issue.[18] *
The evidence of him being a member of MS13 is dubious at best, and suspicious since he and his brother had fled to the US to escape gangs in El Salvador.
He didn't fail to deport, he applied for asylum and withholding of removal during the process. Asylum wasn't possible because it needed to be applied for within a year of arriving, but he was granted withholding of removal, which he'd maintained by checking in yearly with ICE since 2019.
Factsheet: The Human Cost of Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-the-human-c...
> Since its founding in 2002, Guantánamo Bay military prison has held 780 adults and minors from around fifty different countries, all of whom are Muslim. As of 2022, 732 of them (or 94 percent) have been released without ever having been formally charged. Nine men have died in custody, seven by apparent suicide and two due to illness. Of the thirty-nine remaining, thirteen have been recommended for release but remain imprisoned. Twelve out of the original 780 (or 1.5 percent) have been charged with or convicted of crimes and remain in Guantánamo. The remaining fourteen individuals continue to be held without trial in indefinite detention.
It only makes sense if those arranging this get a kick out of seeing what they can get away with.
Well . . . a difference. Something like 95% of Gitmo detainees were eventually determined not to be terrorists and were freed. I expect No Salvador to be a bit worse.
To be a citizen, you have 8th amendment protections against "cruel and unusual" punishment. As it is, it can be fiercely debated for involuntary servitude in foreign nations as "unusual" as it is, but prisons like the El Salvador one are innately cruel and unusual, watch any media or even El Salvador's brags about its techniques and methodologies last year.
To be sent there - or to any other country to do a bid - is to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, to be subjected to such as an American citizen is unconstitutional.
We, as citizens, really need to take a step back and decide if we're going to do something about this tyranny - and if we'll truly be our brother's keepers. If a post-Heller America in 2008 couldn't even agree on trusting the government to fairly regulate a constitutional right like guns, why trust them to define “heinous” or “violent” and not yank your 8th Amendment protections, as well? Once they can call you an “exception,” they can ship you off anywhere, even to some third-world prison, and say “tough luck.” That’s the same overreach we’re supposed to be wary of in the first place.
Also, Garcia was granted protected status to remain in the US, and had a separate court order saying he specifically couldn't be sent to El Salvador. They are no longer saying it like it is. Will they for us?
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1jz477g/trump_to_bukel...
Does anyone know if this is true? That could create a real catch-22, toss someone into a prison full of gang members, make them join a foreign terrorist organization to survive, then invalidate their withholding because they are now a terrorist.
1) "This guy is gang member."
2) Toss in jail, surrounded by the gang members he tried to escape. (Even if El Salvador thing gets stopped, same plan works in US)
3) Gang forces him to join
4) Now part of terrorist organization
5) "Terrorists are ineligible for orders of withholding."
So your question has been elucidated. They did it so they could invalidate parole or orders of withholding of removal by either labeling immigrants as in MS-13 or forcing them to join by tossing them in jail with gangs and then using it against them. It was a necessary precursor to the deportations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
Wikipedia says as much:
> The Salvadoran government does not plan to release any prisoner from CECOT,[19] and Minister of Justice and Public Security Gustavo Villatoro has stated that prisoners incarcerated at CECOT will never return to their communities.
It strictly and literally is a one-way destination.
I don't care how violently stupid someone is in their support of this garbage administration, if even the smooth-brained Trump supporter doesn't realize how grotesquely anti-American and dangerous this is, they aren't paying attention.
Now that the reality is staring them in the face, suddenly folks want to know "what can we do?" Well, I'll tell you exactly what you can do:
Nothing.
I want to make this abundantly clear: you cannot undo this damage. You cannot roll back this clock. You cannot go backwards to a time before our elected leaders annihilated the global trust in American Empire, Business, and Institutions in favor of authoritarian ideals. We have had over thirty years of clear warnings about the outcomes of our policies, and nobody gave a fuck.
The Old World is Dead (https://green.spacedino.net/the-old-world-is-dead/), and you cannot get it back. What we can do now, is move as quickly as possible to distance ourselves from the failed American state, its authoritarian regimes, and the sycophant companies and entities that enabled it. That means ditching American media, American goods, American services, and American capital. It's going to mean ostracizing an entire country and its people, and accepting the suffering that will bring until a new country (or countries) arise from its ashes, willing to cooperate on the global stage once more.
The only bright side is that countries who open their doors to persecuted minorities from America (LGBTQ+, non-white, neurodivergent, the disabled) are likely to reap immense brain gains as a result. America has failed, but the new world order has yet to be established - so if you want your country to have a seat at the table, now is the time to hoard (ex-)American talent and integrate them into your own society.
We're in the "free-fall" portion now. All we can do is wait and see how far we fall before striking the ground. The time to stop it was during any of the steps we took toward the cliff's edge.
Now their team has won and they get to kill all the bad guys in peace.
I hear this a lot. It's fascinating when you consider how many people claimed to have voted for Trump because he is a liar.
It's wild. I have no idea if he meant to do this, but by being a known liar it let supporters pick and chose what to agree with.
This attitude is especially prominent in tech. There's a very real desire to immediately replace whatever was old with whatever is new, regardless of utility or viability. We're participants in (or supporters of) a system of startup-expansion-acquisition-repeat that only focuses on building something new that has a perceived valuation, not something that's actually beneficial. There's no attitude to look back or be objective, because tomorrow will just be better anyway. So when your business leaders, capital investors, regulators, engineers, and developers are all "high on their own supply" of new > old and complex > simple, that attitude seeps out into other aspects of society as a whole.
Nobody likes naysayers who are right. It's just our curse, I guess.
Who told you this? Because science shows again and again that humans respond stronger to negative stimuli than positive. This is also why media is mostly filled with bad news, and "good news only channels" always fail.
BTW we have so many words for people who bring bad news unnecessarily exactly because people overreact to bad news, and quite often it reaches comical proportions, and needs to be called out. Like the guy who shows up at a party just to tell everyone that every beer shortens the lifespan for one minute.
And even if what you say is true, think about it: this is a mechanism that has somehow evolved across all cultures independently. Either this, or it is a biological atittude, predating the idea of "culture". Therefore, it's not a stretch to assume that it has its purpose, and "people doing whatever they have been doing for thousands of years" is NOT a reason to panic.
just because we respond more doesn't mean we like it more. they only trust the fear instillled on them by whatever authority they worship. They will dismiss it from peer and even family. That's one factor in why the nuclear family is shredding apart as a concept.
Of course they do. Imagine walking down the street, seeing a homeless guy on drugs yelling that the end is coming, and being shit scared that the end is truly coming.
It's almost like believing your village's shaman more than your own family. Or believing your priest more than believing your family. Or believing the king more than believing your family. Truly unprecedented times we've found ourselves in.
I'm not even entirely convinced most actually trust the administration. I've just seen enough people who'd rather die than ever admit they were wrong. Not much you can do at that point of fatal pride.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973
As someone who grew up next to a former concentration camp, the main takeaway when talking to survivors was: If you give the benefit of the doubt, you won't believe fascism has taken over until it's too late. You should talk to your friends and close ones and draw a line somewhere. Maybe it's once a US citizen gets send to El Salvador. Just something to agree on. Once this happens normal is over and we need to act. And organize locally don't stay on your own during these times.
I hope the best for the US.
I remember this same "sky is falling" rhetoric when Bush got reelected. Time moves on and the world will heal.
If you have an RSS Aggregator, the main URL has an RSS feed (green.spacedino.net/rss). Less e-mail clog, easier updates, though Ghost's RSS feed isn't exactly terminal-friendly if that's your jam (mainly due to mixed media).
I might get around to fixing e-mail in the future. Appreciate the heads-up though, thank you!
We have been the most well-armed nation in the world for less actual material reason than most countries in the world have ever had. Not being disappeared into a concentration camp indefinitely seems like a justification for lots of people to go down fighting.
But the average German Jew? Maybe they have more incentive to be prepared? If guns are readily available?
This isn't in the category of "to save their life, they started carrying weapons". This is in the category of collective defense - "To provide a deterrent, they started carrying weapons, just to make their abduction/murder costly". It doesn't make sense (for most) to sacrifice their lives just for their residency - getting deported is not the end of the world. But if the result is "You get thrown into a torture/slave/deathcamp and forgotten for the rest of your short life", that changes the calculus a great deal.
-Alexander Solzhenytsin
- Cyrus
They are more likely to be victims of crime because they often can't/won't go to the police.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/latinx-immigrant-crime-vict...
None.
> Would the ICC take this case?
Maybe, not that it would matter much given that even member states refuse to enforce rulings if they run contra to U.S. goals.
> Are there any penalties that would (in theory) apply to either country?
No.
Not that it would matter anyway, both are sovereign countries that can just go "nuh uhh"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
It would require a simple majority vote. That's all.
The power of the purse can be taken back by Congress. It can reorganize the committees and resume investigations and oversight where there has been none.
Given that the executive branch is ignoring judicial branch rulings, and is ignoring legislation, what makes you think they won't ignore more legislation?
When it comes to boots on the ground, donald and elmu's doge crew made sure they are the ones controlling the systems which control the flow of the money, thus they are the ones controlling the money.
Land of the free, home of the brave. One of the biggest US lies.
So I have to "Well actually" my "Well actually"
https://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2021/08/the-myth-of-an...
I really hope I'm missing something here.
As usual, beware of the military-industrial complex. Just like with Iraq, they will get what they want at the cost of the taxpayer. We will get nothing back but less stability.
This is the thing to remember as the current regime uses this El Salvadorian prison as a beta-testing gulag. We'll soon see more hints that they will be built within our borders, and all actions leading up to that are conditioning the population for acceptance of this idea, especially for the folks that support the regime.
Thing is, even they will not be safe. The rules will never be made clear save for "if you're not with us, you're against us," so people who thought they were being loyal will start getting snatched up along with the rest of the dissenters, agitators and whomever else they don't like.
the US media has absolutely no ability (or interest) in grappling with the reality of the situation they have helped cause.
According to who? Why do you think this is somehow the case?
The contract between the two countries is only for 1 year, and that doesn't mean everyone will even stay there that long.
In what scenario does indefinite detention make any realistic sense even for the best-case scenario of its intended purpose i.e. rightfully-deported violent criminals?
Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
I'm not saying what's going on isn't wrong or that there aren't other huge problems with it, but your response to me just seems even more out of touch with reality than the current situation itself.
The biggest problem I personally have with this is the administration's complete lack of empathy. Not once has anybody in the executive branch apologized for wrongly deporting anyone, made any attempt at saying they should be brought back, or that they were going to try, or that they even wanted to try. Instead they're seemingly actively doing everything they can to prevent lifting any useful fingers whatsoever.
Where did you see this contract? I follow quite a few lawyers in this space who have been asking to see said contract and AFAIK it hasn't been produced. Can you link to it please?
> Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
Uhh... yes? This person hasn't just not received a life sentence, they weren't even charged.
I think the judge is beyond frustrated and I would expect contempt charges to start flying pretty quickly, particularly after the government seems to keep flaunting her orders.
Source?
But from what I roughly understand, Xinis own documents don't have direct reference to a contract. They rely on AP's reporting of such a contract. So it's legally pretty ephemeral as of now.
Yet another law brokenm since such foreign treaties and contracts should be publicly documeted. But what does that matter at this point?
It should be findable on either PACER or court listener, although all the ones I read were pdf from various news articles.
Kilmar Garcia has never been charged with a crime and is not a defendant in any case whatsoever. He is a kidnapping victim who is suing his kidnapper.
Into the main topic: I looked and don't see any such filing. I can find references to a memo from El Salvador claiming that it's 1 year for $6 million. I can't find a contract though, so the evidence suggests no such contract has been produced. Curious if you're willing to link directly to it though!
Here's what the aforementioned filing states:
> According to a memorandum issued by El Salvador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agreement provides that the detainees will be held “for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on [their] long term disposition.”
I.e. referencing a memo, not a contract. This is unusual/illegal as any contract that USG signs over $25,000 must be reported.
>The Government undertook this action pursuant to its agreement with El Salvador, wherein the United States paid El Salvador six million dollars to hold detainees “for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on [their] long term disposition.” Dist. Ct. Op. at 6
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ab...
I think this was written by Judge Thacker
That's a contract.
You can semantic-smith all you want that a memo cannot present the contract. A contract can be referenced without there being some big document that says 'contract' on it. Everyone else but you knows what it is. Whatever you reply next will just be word-garbage to try and refute that. Judges in this case aren't buying it, and they aren't buying your case that informal arrangements are nothing but memos.
No, you can't. You can try to escape the substance of the argument with phrases like "semantic-smith" if you'd like, but law is semantics.
And no, the judges referencing the memo that claims such an agreement exists does not indicate that judges "buy it" that there is a contract. The case before them is not about contracting compliance and public records, so they wouldn't be interested to bottom out that issue. The quoted language is not even allegedly from any agreement, contract or not, formal or informal. The quoted language is from a memo about the alleged agreement.
Edit to your edit:
> they aren't buying your case that informal arrangements are nothing but memos.
Ah, so it's "an informal arrangement" now? Interesting change of heart you've had. Our government is not allowed to make "informal arrangements" that involve shipping human beings to foreign governments and paying them several million dollars per year, for all sorts of very obvious procurement and budgetary reasons, even aside from the human rights issues.
But they did.
Trump & co pulled one over on you. Just because it's not in the GPoE does not mean it doesn't exist.
It appears to be an informally arranged contract. Federal judges and 'memos' also recognizes this contract. Bukele and Trump publicly have reiterated much of the terms. I do not know if you will ever see a single traditional looking contract paper you desire, but the evidence is everywhere, not the least of which that the memos statements and actual reality of El Salvador taking prisoners on behalf the US and publicly stating they have an agreement to do it.
You can't fly aircraft full of prisoners into a foreign country and have a televised propaganda show depositing them into a gulag without "an agreement."
Great job moving the goal posts and answering now to my original point: the USG has not produced evidence of a contract, as they are legally required to have and present.
Neither I, nor you, nor the public, nor the judge actually know what the terms of any agreement actually are. We know only what appeared in a memo written about an agreement.
Sorry but there's no way you thought I was suggesting the US just unilaterally put people in a foreign prison, lol. Good luck lifting those goal posts.
> The contract between the two countries is only for 1 year
Ty's red herrings about court filings and so on are just that: red herrings. All sources lead back to exactly one piece of information, which is an AP article about a memo from El Salvador about an agreement. That AP article claims the memo says the following:
"El Salvador confirms it will house these individuals for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on their long term disposition"
That's it. It does not say "only" for one year. There is no information about the renewal terms. There is no information about what happens after one year. No one has produced the full set of terms of this agreement, and no one has produced evidence (as is required under US law) that an actual signed contract even exists (as is required under US law).
Readers can assess that how they wish.
That is my understanding and that is indeed a separate issue that appears to be still underway. It was reported that Democrats in Congress already asked DHS for a copy of the contract on April 8 but I have not heard any updates on that yet.
But Occam's razor here... what's more likely? That the sky is falling and the US can and will now send people to their (presumed) death without any charges or day in court whatsoever (while you sit here accepting it, doing nothing), or that this is not actually the beginning of the end of the entire country in one fell swoop?
I choose to believe this is not the end.
No, it's not "the end," but no, it is also not certain at all that he's ever coming back or that a contract even exists.
That Trump 47 is true to his word and will keep boiling the frog if we don't stop him. I'm pretty tired of giving the BOTD to an administration that has so far done all teh bad things they promised (oh sorry. "joked about") and none of the good things.
Thank you for asking. The answer to your question is the first answer. It's not a matter of "can", it's a matter of "did, and publicly plans to do it more".
Given that they've been sent to a brutal prison involving torture and forced labor, and that the people who sent them there are now claiming they have no power to bring them back?
Yeah man Occam's razor says we have a dictator doing and end run around the constitution, not that they are just being held for a few months before their trail date.
They have no rehabilitation programs and do not intend to establish such. There is no intent that the prisoners ever leave.
The plan with these US-sourced prisoners may be different from the ones El Salvador put there themselves, but apparently that's entirely up to Bukele now.
[EDIT] And regardless, "who knows when?" is indefinite.
It would be very nice indeed if the defense's assertions were treated as true by anyone with power to fix this.
No one has seen any such contract, which is legally required both to exist and to be publicly listed under US law.
Quite often contracts are never 'seen' and instead prosecution surrounding them involve gathering evidence, in this case including 'memos' and direct statements of heads of state.
Xinis and Thacker represent that an AP article referenced a memo that refers to an agreement.
This is immaterial to the case before them, it is not immaterial to the falsity of your comments.
>Considering these facts, and with no evidence to the contrary provided by the Government, the district court properly determined that “just as in any other contract facility, Defendants can and do maintain the power to secure and transport their detainees, Abrego Garcia included.” Dist. Ct. Opinion at 12. In its filings before this court, the Government makes no more than a naked assertion that Abrego Garcia “is in the custody of a foreign sovereign over whom America has no jurisdiction.” Mot. for Stay at 9. But the record demonstrates otherwise. There is no indication that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime in El Salvador or is being held there pursuant to the laws of El Salvador. On the contrary, Abrego Garcia is a detainee of the United States Government, who is being housed temporarily in El Salvador, “pending the United States’ decision on [his] long term disposition.” S.A. 149. Thus, the district court’s order does not require the United States to demand anything of a foreign sovereign.
Instrumental here is 'contract facility.'
The District court and Thacker's quote cite the El Salvador facility as a 'contract' facility. On that basis they argue it is not a demand on a foreign sovereign, but rather a detention by the USG.
From immediately before your quote:
> Surely, Defendants do not mean to suggest that they have wholesale erased the substantive and procedural protections of the INA in one fell swoop by dropping those individuals in CECOT without recourse
My issue with your phrasing is the assertion that El Salvador is somehow a 1-year relationship or detention. We have no evidence beyond an AP report about a memo that this is the case. Neither we nor the judges know what the terms of this agreement are. For the judges' purposes, the terms are irrelevant beyond "does the US have control," which of course they do.
Nobody is going to hold prisoners from another country indefinitely for free.
Where there's money, there's some kind of agreement. Even if it's completely unspoken and unwritten (which I doubt either way).
If the money stops, so would their acceptance of droves of new deportees.
Not to mention that $6M for 300 people indefinitely is nowhere near enough... but for 1 year it certainly makes a lot more sense, I think that comes out to $20k/yr per person, which is cheaper than what it costs the US to do the same.
(And as a side assertion, that the Trump administration is breaking the law by not having said contract available for at least the judge, if not the public).
Remember they will be doing forced labor. They've essentially been remanded into slavery.
I would have saved the typing and just put this. indefinite can be 2 days, or 200 years. He was never given a sentence and this very article shows the intent to release anyone.
That's fundamentally incompatible with the idea that El Salvador is holding him at their direction and under a limited time contract.
Indeed. And then what would be the point of the contract? Nobody is going to hold prisoners from another country indefinitely for free, even El Salvador, that just Does Not Compute (TM). I would much prefer to assume the DOJ is simply lying and that they are wrong, as to me that seems extremely likely.
Bukele says he doesn't forsee ever releasing anyone from CEDOT and has specifically ruled out doing so in this case. Trump says he's powerless to get him released.
> In what scenario does indefinite detention make any realistic sense even for the best-case scenario of its intended purpose i.e. rightfully-deported violent criminals?
Slave labor, which is what the people in CEDOT are being used for, again per their own president.
> Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
Yes! That's the whole problem!
He has released 8,000 people in the last 3 years.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/bukele-reconoce-8%2e000-inocent...
https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-us-rubio-prison-de912...
The time isn't 2 years from now to change this at mid terms. There won't be a free place to speak or protest by then yet alone a free election system at the pace this is happening.
I hope others will join.
- "President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February. “I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”"
The only remaining options aren't pleasant, but the short-list:
* The Legislative Branch turns on the Executive and begins stripping its power through laws or impeachment (unlikely, given the sycophants in both parties who championed this outcome)
* States secede from the USA, citing the lack of legitimacy of the current Federal Government in its flouting of the Constitution (unlikely, given the spineless cowards in most State Governments more preoccupied with becoming the next President or Senator themselves)
* The people revolt, waging a civil war against themselves and finding a new path forward
I really don't think most folks understand how bad this is. People like me are accused of being hyperbolic or alarmist, but the current situation really is equivalent to a CEO firing his Board (Congress), locking out auditors (the Judiciary), and jailing dissident workers or contractors (this case), all while letting his buddies raid the accounts under the guise of reducing inefficiencies (DOGE and Technoligarchs). The closest parallels really are Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin's Russia, and none of those had a "happy ending".
In the short term, trust is obliterated. In the long term, we're a crumbling empire who has to sacrifice far more than we will ever benefit, just to get an equivalent seat at the table again. For the next several generations (inclusive of the current ones), times are going to be bleak.
If that fails, the Judiciary could also in theory declare the executive in breach of their oaths and urge the military, state and other federal officials, and the public at large to follow their own oaths to the Constitution.
But at that point it’s just a civil war with more legitimacy. It’s still the right move for the court to make in the situation where they can no longer force the executive to follow the law.
It's very difficult understanding what Schumer was thinking a few weeks back, beyond personal cowardice.
Trump: they demand you, they love you, they love what you do...
Bukele: {something about supporters}
Trump: you know what I want to do? Home-grown criminals are next. {louder, to his senior staff in the room} I said HOME-GROWNS are next. The home-growns. You've got to build about five more places.
Bukele, laughing: Yeah, that's fair! Alright.
{big burst of laughter from Trump's staff}
Trump: It's not big enough!
Maybe…
simply put, not for him. this man did not get saved by this version of the savior... he got wrecked by El Salvador rather than saved
https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lmsxj...
What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentrat...
1. he'd dead and he pushed to make sure he had no due process
2. He's in such a near dead state that it would spark outcry that may even penetratie the propoganda.
3. any unedtied footage of the prisons would bring immediate allusions to concentration camps and make enough of the conservative size realize the US is falling into facism,
As is, we may be risking a civil war over this.
Hilary was only wrong about two things: It's not half of his supporters it's 100% and they're not "deplorables", they're monsters.
America is being attacked from the top, Donald Trump gaining and abusing more and more personal power every day in an apparent attempt to become an autocrat, meanwhile he and the dictator of El Salvador sit in the White House and just about the ONLY power you will see these two disclaim is that they "don't have the power" to bring this guy back.
The ONLY thing I can see that makes this not intellectually interesting is just how sad and maddening it is. That definitely detracts from the curiosity of it all. But it's hard to imagine historians will find it remotely uninteresting.
Hard to be intellectually curious when you're living in fear, and potentially in a future war torn country. I understand some reasoning for this mindset, but I'm glad you realize how dire this is an an attack on the very core systems that allow such curious discussion.
We have multiple university professors strongly considering fleeing to Canada as a small sample. It's pretty clear how such moves will affect the long term abilities for a site like this to operate.
I certainly don't want all news on this topic to be here; there's plenty of places to get that. But we definitely could discuss it here in ways which aren't accessible many other places if we take on the rather difficult task of finding some curiosity about the what exactly is going on.
Moreover, if I'm keeping track of the cases correctly, this person was specifically protected from being returned to El Salvador because of persecution. Disgusting.
But now, a bright line has been crossed. Anybody in a group that Trump supporters hate has to consider that there is a non-zero chance an encounter with the wrong type of law enforcement could end with being tortured in a foreign prison. In a nation governed by fear, my mind is not nearly as clear on priorities and risk assessment when the cop asks me to come with him without a rock solid explanation. That's dangerous, for everybody, including the police.
Personally, I don't believe that he is still alive and they're just delaying matters so that they can bury that news and pin the blame on El Salvador.
"White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also chimed in, saying: "So it's very arrogant, even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens. As a starting point, as two immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13," "
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/el-salvador-president...
Agents of the government have given multiple sworn statements in court that removing him from the country was both an error and in violation of the law.
I suppose that the solicitor general can say that they perjured themselves. Much more reasonable is that Miller is a lying sack of shit spewing lies on TV.
Miller is attempting to cover up evidence of a kidnapping, and impede justice (not to mention Justices).
This is a crime.
When they're in front of Congress, typically their tunes change. Sometimes even then they don't. Will they be charged with Perjury? Perhaps, when hell freezes over. Sometimes, it requires a ballsy journalist to reveal the truth, even when the truth should be obvious.
It’s not worth speculating beyond that. From a purely cynical view, it’s better for the rule of law if he is alive as he can be a test case. If he’s dead, that is likely a different court case that could get assigned to a different more credulous or craven judge, plus burn out some time.
Not exactly a group known to say anything factual.
No one was actually met with, no was even called. The lawyer constantly use language to the effect of "to my understading" as means to try and distance himself as far from the case as possible to minimize any potential contempt/sanctions on his end.
No one in America legitmately knows what's going on as of now. Maybe Trump does now but we know how that goes.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/chris-van-holle...
In other words, when you read news like this, you should be reacting the same way as when you hear about third-world death squads lining up dissidents against the village wall and dumping their bodies in a well. The impact of the violence has been sanitized and laundered, but the net result is mostly the same.
If the US doesn't have control over who it sends there, the crimes of Trump & his ICE are far worse, far more in violation of the constitution. If this weren't horrific monstrosity to circumvent habeas corpus maybe perhaps this wicked act could scrape through the courts.
Its just so fucked how much misanthropy is running the world. Hating other people is powering the growth of such deeply sick rises to power.
I strongly recommend a tour of the Grievances of the Declaration of Independence. Ironically a document shown to Bukele before his situation down. The things being done are absolutely wild tyrant shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...
and the president has a 91 approval rate, consistent with what you'd expect when you go from the murder capital of the world to the safest country in central america
Generally, those sorts of approval ratings for an executive leader (you do see them sometimes for non-executive heads of state, though in that case they can be seen as less alarming) are a serious red flag; they're generally a dictatorship signal. No-one is _that_ popular.
The beginning of the end will be if this starts happening to US citizens, although that hasn't happened.
If "oopsy-doopsy, it was a mistake" has no remedy then there is no remedy when it is a citizen who gets sent to a gulag.
Do you think that's the final straw? What if the US did it to a citizen? Would you emigrate or resist?
Genuinely curious; I feel like things are bad but salvageable.
Is there some type of polymarket where I can place a bet that you don’t do this and neither does anyone else and the US housing market goes up another 4% next year?
I’ve just been hearing this same type of thing since the war in Iraq began (albeit with less cryptocurrency back then) and it’s a little exhausting at this point.
This community is becoming a moral embarrassment and nearly not worth participating in any longer.
> what it proves is that users will flag unsubstantive flamewar posts on Hacker News, regardless of the topic or the commenter's position on the topic. This is a good thing!
I think it has to pass the moderators bar for acceptance: is this just antoher "MOT", or will it generate "curious" discussion. Combine that with the fact that the HN site gets a lot of these submissions and it's sort of a phenomenon that I like to call "no one goes there, it's too crowded!".
But again...they are free to make public statements denouncing what is happening without having to interfere in the moderation. Yet they have not done so. Why not?
Instead, what do they ask for?...For people to "make good new things".
But sometimes, obstruction or even destruction is just as "good". One doesn't watch a cancer grow and say "hmmm....what good thing can i create in response?" No. You fucking destroy the cancer.
They don't want that though. "Good new things" are profitable. Destruction isn't. (Unless it's the destruction of moral constraints.)
And worse yet, destruction will inevitably result in the downfall of some of their very close friends and acquaintances. It's no surprise they aren't saying anything.
(I realize your response is neutral, or I at least read it as such, so please don't take my comment as an attack on you.)
I also simply don't believe it. Because by that logic any AI topic as of late should be flagged as well. People just want to enjoy their circus even as the bombs outside go off.
Wasn’t on my 2025 bingo list…