Mass deportations will lead to human rights atrocities in El Salvador, unless the Biden administration acts now

Amy Argenal
UC Santa Cruz

In late November, 2024, two human rights lawyers from the organization Socorro Jurídico Humanitaria (Humanitarian Justice Rescue) in El Salvador visited classrooms, community spaces, and living rooms in communities across the United States to share harrowing tales about their work fighting for justice for the estimated 25,000 innocent people who are incarcerated under Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “State of Exception.”

The state of exception is a suspension of civil liberties that was put in place in March 2022 to combat one of El Salvador’s deadliest weekends of gang violence. It allows the judicial system to hold people without trial indefinitely. It was originally put in place for one month, but has been renewed for over 32 months, becoming the new normal. El Salvador now has more than 82,000 people incarcerated under these policies, without any hope of a trial. 

Socorro Juridico, as well as other human rights organizations, have described the conditions inside as “deadly,” according to the testimonies of the few people who have obtained release. Inside, there is no access to medical care, the prisoners are allowed only 4 ounces of water a day, they suffer physical and psychological torture by the guards, live in overcrowded facilities, and have little to no access to legal representation and no right to a timely trial.

ARPAS - March to demand the freedom of innocent people detained under the state of Exception.

The crucial importance of sharing these stories with the American public is that the Trump Administration seems poised to exacerbate these human rights atrocities through mass deportation. Socorro Juridico representatives shared three examples of cases in which those who had recently been deported from the United States to El Salvador were immediately picked up by the security state and brought to one of the penal centers under the state of exception. The alleged criminal charge was that, if someone has been deported, they are inherently a criminal.

Amidst this backdrop, the U.S. president-elect has made serious threats of mass deportations, and the Trump and Bukele regimes appear likely to develop increasingly close and friendly relationships. In the coming years, it’s entirely likely that there could be a direct line of deportation from the United States to the brutal Salvadorian penal centers.

Salvadorans make up a large percentage of those with precarious immigration status in the United States, and they are frightened. In particular danger are undocumented immigrants and the 200,000+ Salvadoreans in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status, which the first Trump administration already began the process of cancelling.

Temporary protected status will come up for review in March of 2025, and the Trump administration is likely to claim that El Salvador is safe for return, despite evidence to the contrary. The state department currently warns US citizens against traveling to El Salvador on the grounds that they may be picked up under the state of exception.We must expect that the danger will be far greater for those who might be deported.
 
Given the massive scale of human rights violations taking place in El Salvador under the state of exception, our current administration must take urgent action to prevent future U.S. complicity.
 
The Biden administration and the State Department should review El Salvador’s TPS authorization now and renew it prior to the U.S. presidential inauguration in January, 2025. We still have a small window left to call out human rights violations and work to secure the safety of our Salvadoran community here in the United States. But we must act now.