The US Is Now in the Human-Trafficking Business

After deporting 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador—likely in violation of court orders—the Trump administration has triggered an unprecedented showdown with the judicial branch to defend its ability to deport immigrants without presenting any evidence in court. Invoking the state secrets privilege—which allows the government to withhold evidence to protect national security interests—DOJ lawyers have refused to reveal deportation flight departure times and also tried to appeal Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order (TRO).
This deportation effort constitutes a clear assault on civil liberties and due process rights. It also represents an arguably darker milestone: the US government is now in the business of trafficking migrants on the global market.

On March 15, the Trump administration struck a $6-million agreement with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in which the government traded 238 people to be warehoused for a year in CECOT—the “crown jewel” of Bukele’s deeply anti-democratic domestic security platform and where prison sentences are reportedly indefinite, with no possibility of release. Despite ongoing legal intervention, the administration has since doubled down. On March 26, as DOJ lawyers sought a federal appeals court ruling that will allow them to resume deportations to El Salvador, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited the country to tour CECOT and deepen the administration’s relationship with Bukele. And in another overnight operation this past weekend, the US deported 17 more people to El Salvador, using a different legal mechanism to get around Judge Boasberg’s TRO.

The country’s partnership with El Salvador is designed to score cheap political points and marginal financial gains, at the enormous moral cost of reducing people to tradable commodities on the global market. Even after conceding that they illegally deported one Maryland father who had already been granted protected status by an immigration judge, the Trump administration has said they cannot bring him home because he is now in foreign custody—meaning the executive branch is prioritizing its trade relationship with El Slavador over compliance with American law.