For Immediate Release

Members of Congress urge new Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin to provide information on dozens of Salvadorans deported from the U.S. who remain jailed in El Salvador, question legality of U.S. payment to government of El Salvador for such purposes

Letter comes as international human rights experts document forced disappearances, warn of possible crimes against humanity being committed under State of Emergency now entering its fifth year

Washington, DC: On his first day as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, twenty-eight members of the U.S. Congress led by Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA), Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee and Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, sent a letter to Markwayne Mullin demanding information about the 30 to 40 Salvadoran immigrants whom the U.S. “secretly transferred … alongside more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism and Confinement (“CECOT”) between March and April of 2025.” Read the full letter here.

The U.S. paid the Salvadoran government at least $4.75 million to jail the immigrants; while the Venezuelans were ultimately released through a prisoner swap, the Salvadorans are either known or presumed to remain in custody in the CECOT or other prisons, if they are still alive.

Members also cited concerns over the “credible allegations of gross violations of human rights at CECOT” and existing U.S. laws that make any payments made by the U.S. to El Salvador for the transfer of prisoners there “likely unlawful.”

The letter comes on the heels of mobilizations in El Salvador and internationally marking four years since the government of El Salvador suspended constitutional rights under the State of Exception, a 30-day emergency measure that has been continuously renewed since March 27, 2022 in violation of El Salvador’s constitution. A group of international jurists recently found “serious human rights violations committed by the government of El Salvador under the State of Exception [may] constitute crimes against humanity.”

The Representatives, including Ranking Member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Joaquin Castro (D-TX), urged Secretary Mullin and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to provide basic information on every individual put on the flights, including in order to ascertain whether any “may have been subject to invalid deportation orders, making their deportations illegal acts.” Kilmar Abrego García, for example, had a withholding of removal order preventing his deportation to El Salvador.

The full list of passengers on the March and April flights to El Salvador has never been made public, leaving family members whose loved ones never arrived following their deportation from the U.S. to comb leaked flight logs and government propaganda videos for answers. Family members of Brandon Sigarán, Irvin Quintanilla, Élmer Escobar, José Osmín Santos, William Martínez, and Miguel Fuentes appealed to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, after the Salvadoran government initially denied that they had been returned to the country.

In response to the Commission, with regards to at least one of the men, the Bukele administration said he remained in custody “under the Bilateral Cooperation Agreement,” and generally that the men remain in custody pending answers from the U.S. regarding their “migratory and legal situation.” None face criminal charges in El Salvador.

“It is outrageous that the U.S. government refuses to provide information about the names of those deported or the actual amount paid to the Salvadoran government,” said Vicki Gass, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group.  “There is also no justification for their continued incarceration in El Salvador if they face no criminal charges there.  We demand accountability on the use of our tax dollars in this despicable action under this administration, and the release and guarantee of due process of those being wrongfully detained.”

“It seems the Trump administration would like the world to forget about these Salvadorans who were ripped away from their families and communities. We applaud their families and advocates who have courageously refused to let that happen,” said Alexis Stoumbelis, Executive Director of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. “Learning that even one immigrant deported from the U.S. remains jailed in El Salvador - having committed no crime there and exposed to well-documented human rights violations - under the terms of an agreement with the United States government should drive every Member of Congress to take action to end this and any similar agreements.”

Last week the Movement of Victims of the Regime (MOVIR) and other community and victims’ rights organizations mobilized in El Salvador to demand the release of tens of thousands of people held incommunicado against whom the state has presented no evidence. They also called for an end to new mass trials that violate the right to defense and threaten thousands of unjust sentences. El Salvador’s own intelligence data suggest that over 33,000 of the over 90,000 arrested had no prior documented ties to gangs.

International human rights organizations and scholars have documented the forcible disappearances of other immigrants deported from the U.S. under these conditions.

In the United States, international solidarity, immigrant rights, and Salvadoran community groups held vigils and demonstrations to mourn the over 500 confirmed deaths in the prisons. Over loudspeakers, demonstrators outside the Embassy of El Salvador in Washington, DC broadcasted the words of the slain Archbishop of El Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who, before his assassination on March 24, 1980 by U.S.-backed death squads, implored the government to “stop the repression.”

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Press contacts:
Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), [email protected], 202-521-2510 ext. 205

Contact for link to photos and videos of U.S. vigils denouncing the four years of an unconstitutional state of exception in El Salvador.