Press Release

Washington, D.C. –  One year ago, on March 15, President Trump unlawfully invoked a 1798 wartime authority to forcibly disappear over 200 Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to detain them in inhumane and dangerous conditions. The administration also disappeared at least 36 Salvadorans to the CECOT, including some who were seeking protection in the United States. Among those disappeared were people with protection from deportation, others mid-immigration proceedings, including some seeking asylum, and longstanding community members, ripped from their homes and families with no due process.  

For nearly four months, the disappeared  were held incommunicado, never permitted to contact their lawyers or loved ones, and subjected to daily abuse. Welcome With Dignity’s members, as well as thousands of people across the country, stood up and demanded accountability in the face of this crisis and rallied around the release of these men, supporting litigation that remains active to this day, and elevating the stories of the men and their families.

In July 2025, the Trump administration agreed to a prisoner exchange with the government of Venezuela, flying 252 Venezuelan men to Venezuela in exchange for the release of 10 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents from Venezuelan prisons. Many of the men who were returned to Venezuela from CECOT had in fact fled Venezuela due to grave threats to their lives and freedom, which persist. Many also have family in the United States from whom they have been cruelly and indefinitely separated. 

Meanwhile, many of the Salvadorans who were disappeared are still trapped in El Salvador’s prisons, including the CECOT, languishing in horrific conditions, without access to family or legal counsel. The situation remains dire for all those in El Salvador’s abusive prison system and in President Bukele’s “State of Exception” – which, in four years, has disappeared 85,000 Salvadorans into prisons with little to no due process. Investigators have documented over 6,000 human rights violations, including torture, due process violations, and over 350 deaths within state custody. 

“The burden of this disaster and ruin is borne by tens of thousands of families who suffer and are paralyzed by the unknowing of whether their loved ones who have been captured and detained by the state are still alive,” said Noah Bullock, Executive Director of Cristosal, a regional human rights organization working across El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The March 2025 disappearances to CECOT were not only used as a tool of mass terror, but also have paved the way for continued human rights and due process violations by the Trump administration. In the past year, the administration has launched a systematic attack on our rights and on our communities – separating families, ripping people from their communities, subjecting individuals, families, and children to horrific and prolonged detention. There has still been no accountability for the disappearances of people from the United States to El Salvador. The administration continues to send people to horrific conditions in other countries. Over the past year, the United States has entered into nearly 30 agreements with countries including Guatemala, Rwanda, and South Sudan to accept U.S. deportations of immigrants who are not nationals of those countries. Through these coercive agreements, the administration is subjecting people to enforced disappearances, prolonged and arbitrary detention, torture, refoulement, family separation, violations of the rights of the child, and other human rights violations.

Today, Welcome with Dignity and our partners reiterate demands to our elected leaders to seek accountability for the human rights and due process violations that occurred when the administration disappeared people to El Salvador; to facilitate returns to the U.S. for those seeking to continue their interrupted asylum cases; and the release of those in CECOT who were disappeared from the U.S.  

“Alarmingly, all Salvadorans who are at risk of deportation face serious danger given the indefinite suspension of constitutional rights in El Salvador and its State of Exception. It’s the same terrifying reality that the entire population of that country has been enduring with the state’s massive arbitrary arrests and lack of due process,” said Jean Stokan, Justice Coordinator for Immigration, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

“It has been a year since  the Trump Administration began to banish  our neighbors to El Salvador, destroying lives and seriously injuring our system of laws,” said Sergio Perez, Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “CECOT is a notoriously inhumane facility, where suffering and death are built into its very foundation. With well-documented instances of torture, including solitary confinement , violence, starvation, and criminal neglect, committing anybody to CECOT is a threat to all of us and a part of this President’s campaign to remake American society into a cruel and hateful place. . We will not let these voices be silenced and we stand in solidary with their families and friends.. They deserve freedom, and the American public deserves to hear their stories so that those responsible face the justice they so readily denied the victims of CECOT.”

“It’s been one year since we watched in horror as planes took off in defiance of a court order and we knew our client Andry was most likely on board. It’s been nearly a year since we saw pictures of Andry being brutalized by guards in that torture prison. Much of what we feared during the 125 days he was held incommunicado turned out to be true – he was being tortured and every day he was there his life was at grave risk. It still takes my breath away to know that it was our own government that intentionally sent him into harm’s way,” Lindsay Toczylowski, CEO and co-founder of ImmDef shared, reflecting on the anniversary. “Today, as we file these complaints seeking justice for Andry and our other clients, they take their power back. Our clients are still living with the consequences of what happened to them, while the people responsible for their suffering walk free and continue to wield their power with impunity. If Donald Trump and Stephen Miller get away with sending people without due process to prisons in foreign countries to be tortured, then what happened to Andry can happen to any one of us. Our choice, as a people of conscience, is to either fight back and demand justice now or look around and ask, ‘Who among us is next?’ The men sent to CECOT were the canaries in the coal mine, a test case for how much cruelty and violence we will tolerate as a society. Today – and every day – ImmDef is choosing to fight back. We will continue this fight for as long as it takes to secure justice for Andry, Arturo, Maikel, Miguel, Ysqueibel, and Pedro.” 

“One year ago, the U.S. government struck a deal with El Salvador to send people to CECOT, knowing full well that people are held indefinitely and subjected to torture in the megaprison,” said Cynthia Totten, Deputy Executive Director of Just Detention International. “The reports of beatings and sexual abuse, bravely shared by people who survived CECOT, are just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that the American public is funding a black site torture chamber is a stain on our country. We demand no more illegal disappearances. We demand justice for the countless El Salvadoreans who are being held incommunicado, with no end in sight. We demand no more CECOT.”  

“It has been a year since the Trump administration rendered hundreds of people to a notorious torture prison in a foreign country, including people in the United States exercising their legal right to seek asylum, people with judicial orders protecting them against being deported, and others who had their constitutional and statutory rights to due process and fairness violated,” said Robyn Barnard, co-manager of the Welcome With Dignity Campaign and senior director of refugee advocacy with Human Rights First. “Independent investigations and testimony by the men who were later refouled back to Venezuela, has confirmed what we all feared; that these men were subjected to torture and inhumane treatment during their extrajudicial detention at CECOT, paid for by the US tax payer dollars. In the year that has passed, we have seen zero remorse, backtracking, or transparency by the Trump administration or the Salvadoran government, and woeful efforts to hold either government accountable. We deserve answers and the rendered men, and all of those being held at CECOT, deserve freedom, safety, and justice.”

“One year ago the Trump administration sent hundreds of men into a black hole of detention and bragged about it.  They were brothers, sons, fathers, and partners. Family members began calling Together and Free when they suspected their loved ones might be part of that group.  Some knew only that they had received one last call from their loved one before they disappeared – without any indication of where,” said Michelle Brané, Executive Director of Together and Free. “Eventually it was confirmed that the majority had no criminal record. The United States became a country from which people disappeared off the streets. President Trump speculated that even United States citizens could be sent to CECOT. Today we are still demanding accountability.”

“One year ago, Las Americas represented a gentleman sent to and tortured at CECOT. He was already separated from his infant child and wife who were being housed in ORR custody and a different detention site. Sadly, the only way out for him was the prisoner swap returning him to the very country he fled years prior,” said Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso. “Flouting the opportunity to learn from the harms inflicted at places like CECOT, this administration, fueled by billions of taxpayer dollars, is ensuring that mass immigration detention and deportation prisons continue to metastasize at sites like Camp East Montana at Ft. Bliss. This administration must be held accountable for the harm caused a year ago and today.”