Irregular Warfare

El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) opened in 2023. It has capacity for up to forty thousand prisoners, although is said to be only half full. CECOT was built to incarcerate members of violent gangs, who by 2015 had made El Salvador the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country. Dispensing with warrants and court hearings, in 2022 the government jailed almost 2 per cent of the population, many on the basis only of their tattoos. The official murder rate fell from 18 per day to one every three days.

In early February, Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, toured Central American capitals. In San Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’, offered to make his prisons available, for a fee, to hold ‘criminal’ migrants deported from the US. In mid-March, 238 Venezuelans were flown there from Louisiana with no due process and in defiance of court orders. All were alleged members of a violent gang from the north of Venezuela called Tren de Aragua (TdA).

On arrival, the Venezuelans were led out of buses in shackles, forcibly bent over and delivered to the prison. Their heads were shaved, they were stripped naked and their clothes were thrown away with their hair. Some broke down in tears. They were given white T-shirts and shorts and led into cells with a hundred occupants each. They now sleep on bare metal shelves, share two open toilets and a barrel of water, have half an hour’s exercise daily, and receive no visitors or phone calls.

It soon emerged that many of the deportees had little or no proven connection with the gang. A scorecard attached to the immigration service’s ‘Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide’ revealed that merely having a tattoo or clothes thought to indicate gang membership is enough to get a Venezuelan citizen deported from the US.

The miscarriages of justice are extraordinary. One victim is a gay make-up artist with no apparent gang affiliations, just some tattoos related to traditional Epiphany celebrations. Another is a 27-year-old delivery driver with a work permit who lived in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and children: he was arrested as he stepped outside his house. A former professional goalkeeper living in Phoenix, Arizona, was detained because of a tattoo showing his support for Real Madrid.

The tenuous justification for the deportations relied on the designation of TdA in February as a ‘terrorist organisation’, conflating violent crime with political intent. Last month, TdA was declared to be ‘infiltrating’ the US and engaging in ‘irregular warfare’ at the alleged direction of the Venezuelan government. The Trump administration claims it can therefore deploy the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, enabling Venezuelans it apprehends to be classed as ‘alien enemies’ who have ‘illegally infiltrated the country’.

Trump’s case is ludicrously weak. First, as lawyers challenging it argued in their 514-page filing to the Supreme Court, the US is not at war with Venezuela. Second, US intelligence agencies contradict the assessment that the gang is controlled by Nicolás Maduro’s government. Third, studies show that most Venezuelans have emigrated for economic reasons. Arguing that their arrival in the US is an ‘invasion’ is clearly absurd. Yet the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the deportations could continue.

Meanwhile, lawyers in El Salvador instructed by the Venezuelan government have been told that their writs of habeas corpus do not apply and they must instead address their challenge to Washington, leaving the deportees – who are essentially kidnap victims – trapped in legal limbo.

Trump has labelled the latest cohort ‘murderers and rapists’, enthusiastically sharing pictures of prisoners shackled, shorn and manhandled. The images reinforce his message that migrants are ‘criminals’, and an analysis of his speeches shows that he uses this terminology against Venezuelans in particular.

His actions also reflect a toughening of policy towards Maduro’s government. On taking power, Trump sent a special envoy to Maduro, to assure him that the US was no longer interested in regime change in Caracas, and to broker a deal for migrants to be deported direct to Venezuela. Some US prisoners in the country were released as a result.

Trump later accused Maduro of breaking the deal, even though migrants were being flown home and welcomed on arrival. The US president imposed new sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports and threatened to penalise third countries that buy the oil. At the end of March he proposed a security deal with Venezuela’s neighbour Guyana in response to an active boundary dispute between the two countries. Rubio warned Maduro that ‘we have a big navy, and it can get almost anywhere.’

What’s in this for Bukele, apart from the $20,000 he’s said to receive for taking each of these ‘criminals’ and (in Trump’s words) giving them ‘such a wonderful place to live’? He’s earned an invitation to the White House later this month (‘I’ll be bringing several cans of Diet Coke,’ Bukele joked). He’s also strengthened his image as a leader who has transformed his country’s security.

But most important might be Bukele’s need to suppress evidence that, back in 2019, he negotiated with gang leaders, offering concessions in return for a reduced murder rate. One such leader, nicknamed ‘Greñas’, later fled to Mexico, where he was apprehended and sent to the US to face terrorism charges. Due in court soon, he could have spilled the beans on the deal, which Bukele denies ever took place. Trump’s justice department dropped the charges before they reached court. It then sent Greñas back to El Salvador, where he was put in CECOT and is unlikely ever to leave.