As we likely recall, earlier this year the Trump administration deported a number of persons to El Salvador. At least 280 individuals, mostly Venezuelans, were sent to the prison in March and April of this year. For additional refreshers, see the following posts.
- El Salvador Offers to be an Out-Sourced Prison for the US
- Can We Call Them “Disappearances” Now?
- Being Sent to CECOT is an Inhumane, Slow-Motion Death Sentence
The issue of CECOT came to mind again because of a recent episode of The Daily, Trump Sent Them to a Notorious Prison. Torture Followed. The podcast was focused on the reporting done in the NYT about 40 Venezuelans who were released from the prison and returned to Venezuela, ‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison.
The piece documents and confirms what we all knew about CECOT: that the conditions in which prisoners are held in that facility conform to UN definitions of torture.
They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours.
One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods.
They said they were told by officials that they would die in the Salvadoran prison, that the world had forgotten them.
When they could no longer take it, they said, they cut themselves, writing protest messages on sheets in blood.
“‘You are all terrorists,’” Edwin Meléndez, 30, recalled being told by officers who added: “‘Terrorists must be treated like this.’”
I just want to note that our government sent these men to be treated like this simply because they were illegally in the United States. Some may have committed actual crimes, others not; we actually don’t know because there was no due process deployed.
Like with the murders of persons on boats in the Caribbean, the only “due process” is the declaration of guilt by the administration.
We are simply told that those who were deported were gang members and the “worst of the worst” the same way that people on boats can be summarily classified as “narco-terrorists.”
Do I have to point out that being a gang member, even if proven in court, does not mean that indefinite imprisonment in a torture prison is a legal option?
Do I have to point out that drug smuggling does not carry the death penalty?
Do I have to point out that we are talking about human beings here?
Do I have to point out that this behavior, the treatment of a specific group as sub-human scapegoats that can be treated worse than farm animals, sounds like evil regimes and ideologies of the past?
Or will Stephen Miller and friends get their feelings hurt for being compared to Nazis and fascists?
Will a reader of this think me infected by Trump Derangement Syndrome for pointing out what is happening in the open, right in front of our noses?
Note the photo above wherein Secretary Noem, dressed up for a social event (maybe a football game?), posed in front of men caged like animals who were subject to torture.
And note that not only were conditions in CECOT known before these men were sent there, but the reporting about the Venezuelans who were released confirms the horrors in question and that the current administration does not care.
From the podcast cited above:
Michael Barbaro
[…] this sounds like a spokesperson for the White House basically saying to “The New York Times,” we’ve seen all your reporting. We’ve seen these accounts of torture of men we put in this prison. And our response is who cares? Which is very striking.
Julie Turkewitz
Correct. And I should mention that the legal door is still open for the Trump administration to continue sending people to El Salvador.
None of this is just. None of it is humane. And the administration is doing all of it knowingly.
