Trump’s arrogantly indiscriminate rendition of migrants to El Salvador’s mega-Guantánamo

The more they lie and the more mistakes they make, the more the Trump administration seems to enjoy its racist offshore migrant imprisonment project.

The first migrants being forcibly shaved after arriving at the CECOT prison on March 15, 2025.

In my latest long read, No One Is Safe As Trump Gleefully Deports Migrants to El Salvador’s Mega-Guantánamo Without Evidence, Or Even Via An “Administrative Error”, I provide a detailed account of Trump’s repugnant "war on migrants", from the slew of "Presidential Actions" when he took office to the “performative cruelty” of his use of Guantánamo, and then, most monstrously, the deal with Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

This, as I have previously reported, has involved a one-way trip for Venezuelan migrants from the US to Bukele’s horrendous CECOT prison, a mega-Guantánamo, where men are held indefinitely without charge or trial in brutal conditions.

I run through the legal challenges, up to and including the Supreme Court, and the horrendous reality that most of the men transferred are not gang members, as alleged, and that the Trump administration has no evidence that they are, that it doesn’t care, and that it is trying to hide this truth behind claims of "national security" secrecy.

I also focus on two particularly egregious cases of injustice: that of Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela, who was sent to the CECOT prison despite having an ongoing asylum claim in the US, and the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian resident of Maryland, who had protected status explicitly preventing his deportation to El Salvador, but who was sent to the CECOT prison because of an "administrative error", and the truly chilling implications of the refusal of both the Trump administration and Bukele to bring him back, defying an order by the Supreme Court.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.

As I say, "If the courts don’t prevail, and if the majority of the Justices in the Conservative-dominated Supreme Court don’t firmly grasp the enormity of how they are being snubbed and sidelined, and thoroughly assert their authority, the US will be entering truly perilous and lawless territory, in which no one — or, at least, no one who isn’t, essentially, a powerful white supremacist — will be safe."

Please support my work if you can

Please consider supporting my work if you appreciate it, as I am a reader-funded journalist and activist, and entirely dependent on your generosity. If you can’t afford a paid subscription here, you can make a one-off donation via PayPal.