Updates on the Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador
There are many developments regarding the US removal of 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador where they were imprisoned in Nayib Bukele's CECOT mega-prison. Here is a summary with links to news articles:
- The US government admits that many of them had no criminal records. (ABC)
- A US photo journalist was at the airport and later at the prison to see the arrival of the Venezuelan prisoners and published photos of how they were handled. (Time)
- CBS News obtained a leaked copy of a list of the names of all the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador and imprisoned there. (CBS)
- Venezuelan families shared the stories of their loved ones who had actually fled from Venezuela and Tre de Aragua, rebutting any suggestion they were part of a criminal gang. (Beyond the Border) (NPR) (BBC).
- At least two of them were refugees who arrived in the US after extensive vetting by the government and refugee organizations. (Miami Herald)
- Eight women on the flight were not allowed to disembark and were returned to the US because Bukele was not accepting women into CECOT. (USA Today)
- US federal district Judge James Boasberg turned his temporary restraining order against use of the Alien Enemies Act into a preliminary injunction and one basis for his ruling was the likelihood that persons sent to Salvadoran prisons would suffer torture. (Ruling) On March 26, the DC Court of Appeals refused the government's request to set aside that injunction. (Washington Post).
- One federal appeals court judge suggested that Nazis detained under the Alien Enemies Act during Word War II received more due process than the Venezuelans. (NPR)
- A US State Department official told Congress that, despite Bukele's cooperation, Salvadorans would continue to be deported if they were in the country illegally. (Diario El Mundo)
- DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is visiting El Salvador and will meet with president Bukele and the CECOT prison on Wednesday. (LPG)
- A group of Salvadoran lawyers announced they were filing habeas petitions on behalf of 30 Venezuelan prisoners with the country's Supreme Judicial Court. Although the habeas remedy exists in the country, the high court has refused to apply it in the hundreds of petitions filed by Salvadorans caught up in the State of Exception. (LPG)
- The authoritarian president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has called the imprisonment of the Venezuelans a "kidnapping" and is demanding they be allowed to return to Venezuela. (CNN).
You can read my original post on the removal of Venezuelans to El Salvador and there imprisonment in CECOT here.
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