Tracking the CECOT Disappearances

• In March 2025, the U.S. government began an unprecedented policy of disappearing people to a mega-jail in El Salvador called the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. Young men were in immigration custody when the Trump administration suddenly disappeared them without notification to their attorneys or loved ones. They did not have due process or a chance to contest being sent to El Salvador.
• The people sent to CECOT included long-time residents with U.S. citizen spouses and children, people who recently arrived, and people in the middle of immigration court proceedings on the path to getting asylum or other relief.
• President Trump has said he would also like to send U.S. citizens to CECOT.

• The Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, or CECOT, is a mega-prison known for its human rights abuses and often described as a gulag. The few images of CECOT are haunting. In 2022, El Salvador issued a state of emergency and carried out mass arrests, imprisoning people in CECOT and other jails.
• CECOT is known for its disturbing silence and “extreme isolation” from attorneys and loved ones (even virtual visits to lawyers are prohibited). There are more than 110,000 people in prison in El Salvador, and the government does not allow basic due process rights, like trials. The U.S. government has highlighted atrocities in Salvadoran prisons.
• Until President Trump, the U.S. had never sent a person from immigration detention to El Salvador to be detained without trial or a final decision in their immigration case. A U.S. official has called CECOT “one of the tools in [federal government’s] toolkit” to enforce immigration laws.
• The administration won’t make its agreement with El Salvador public. The details are hazy at best, and there is a lawsuit pending to try to get the agreement.

• In short: we don’t know. We do know President Trump has a particular fondness for Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele (who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator”) and that the Trump administration has turbocharged immigration enforcement in unprecedented ways.
• The Trump administration says it is using a combination of existing U.S. immigration laws and a centuries-old wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to detain and deport people they claim to be part of a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua. It claims, without evidence, that members of this gang are “invading” the U.S. The U.S. government’s claim of an invasion has been widely debunked. Many courts have found the government’s actions unlawful, but the Supreme Court has not yet ruled.

• In most cases, the administration did not give the young men any information about why or where they were being sent and used a checklist of bizarre “indicators” of gang membership. Merely having a tattoo or something as innocuous as wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey may have led to someone’s disappearance. If any of these men were indeed gang members, there are legal processes that exist for them to view and challenge the evidence the U.S. government claims it has—processes they have been denied.`
• Many of the U.S. government’s public claims about the young men sent to CECOT have been proven false. For example, many of the people deported to CECOT made appointments with the government to enter the U.S. and many had received status and/or were pursuing asylum.
• These individuals were not just denied due process—they were suddenly snatched from their loved ones and are now completely cut off from the outside world. Their spouses, children, and lawyers rely on media lists or brief glimpses of a face on television to determine the whereabouts of these men, wondering daily if they are still alive.
• We have yet to see a full list of the people the government has sent to El Salvador. The U.S. government could easily provide this information and save families anguish. Yet it is intentionally withholding that information.

• The U.S. government refuses to provide this basic information. Based on media reports and information from attorneys and loved ones, we believe the U.S. government has disappeared 288 people to CECOT. But neither the U.S. nor Salvadoran governments have publicly confirmed this number nor the identities of the people sent to CECOT.
  We know of five flights to CECOT:
• March 15, 2025 (three flights): We believe there were 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans on these flights. CBS News published a list of Venezuelans it believes were flown to El Salvador on March 15, here.
• March 31, 2025 (one flight): We believe there were 7 Venezuelans and 10 Salvadorans on this flight. Fox News has published the 16 names here.
• April 13, 2025 (one flight): We believe there were 7 Venezuelans and 3 Salvadorans on this flight. We know of this flight because U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted about it here.

• No. The U.S. government has broken U.S. laws and violated the U.S. Constitution by sending people to CECOT. U.S. law says people must be able to ask for asylum if they are scared to return to their country. It’s also illegal for the U.S. government to send someone to a country where they will probably be tortured. The Constitution also says the government can’t use punishments that are cruel, even for people convicted of crimes, and it is not allowed to abuse or punish people in immigration detention.
• Advocates are making these arguments in different lawsuits against the Trump administration right now. These cases are in different stages but they are all still in process. You can find more information on the legal arguments and status of the cases below.

• The U.S. government is paying the government of El Salvador to jail people sent there. We know that “approximately six million dollars” has already been paid to El Salvador so far.
• The U.S. and El Salvador governments are deliberately hiding the terms of their contract and the ultimate cost to taxpayers, despite repeated demands from Congress and the media. We don’t know whether the U.S. has promised more funds to El Salvador for continued imprisonment of young men at CECOT.

• The U.S. government has sent several flights of detained Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants to the CECOT prison. ICE is not sharing publicly who they have sent to CECOT. Some lists have been published from news reports and court records. A nonprofit group called “Together and Free” has set up a WhatsApp line where families can report if they think their loved one might be in CECOT.
• If you are looking for a loved one who has been arrested by immigration officials, we recommend NILC’s guide, How to Find a Loved One after a U.S. Immigration Arrest.

The U.S. government has said it’s using two different laws to send people to CECOT:

• Alien Enemies Act:
  • The U.S. invoked an archaic law called the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to send 137 Venezuelans to CECOT on two of the three flights on March 15th. The government says this law gives it the power to deport people without any notice or court hearing if the U.S. says they are members of the “Tren De Aragua” gang. The U.S. used the AEA to send Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, even though they still had immigration court cases pending (including pending asylum cases).
•  Third Country Removals:
  • When the U.S. government starts a deportation case against someone, they name the country where the person will be deported (usually the country where they were born or are a citizen). When the U.S. government deports someone to a country that isn’t that named country – like Venezuelans with deportation orders to Venezuela who were instead sent to El Salvador – the government calls it a “third country removal.” The government is supposed to give people the opportunity to contest this type of removal if they could be harmed or tortured in that third country.
  • For men with deportation orders who are not from El Salvador, the U.S. said it used U.S. immigration law to send them to CECOT, even though El Salvador is not their country of origin. This includes some Venezuelans. Some of the men also had deportation orders to countries other than El Salvador.

As of June 10, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court has not made a final decision about whether it is legal for the U.S. government to send people to another country using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). Several U.S. federal courts are now deciding what type of process the government must provide to allow someone to defend themselves against the government’s accusation that they are a Tren de Aragua member.

• Main case challenging the Alien Enemies Act
  The major case challenging the Trump administration’s use of the AEA is called J.G.G. v. Trump. In this case, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward are arguing that the government is breaking the law when it uses the AEA to deport people. The ACLU is also asking for the government to do everything it can to bring back the people sent to CECOT under the AEA.
• Other federal court cases
  There are serious concerns that the government will continue to try to send people to CECOT using the AEA, though the U.S. Supreme Court is currently blocking any further deportations of Venezuelan men to CECOT in certain parts of the country (a helpful recap of that case, A.A.R.P. and W.M.M. v. Trump, is here).
• There are many cases challenging the government’s use of the AEA. In the majority of cases thus far, judges have found the use of the AEA to be unlawful, including: a Texas judge on May 1; a New York judge on May 6; and a Colorado judge on May 6. On May 13, a Pennsylvania judge, however, found the government’s use of the AEA to be legal but that the government must give immigrants and their lawyers a chance to oppose the gang allegations. On June 2, a California judge considered the case of a Venezuelan man detained in California and afraid of being sent to CECOT. The judge prohibited the government from transferring him and found he would likely succeed on arguments that the government violated his due process rights, but not that the government’s use of the AEA was unlawful.

There is one major case about third country removals, D.V.D. v. DHS. People in immigration court proceedings are able to present evidence that they might face torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in the country the government has said they would deport them to (usually their country of origin). But now, the government is trying to deport people to a “third country”—countries they have never been to, like migrants from Vietnam and Laos deported to South Sudan and others to Libya, without notice or an opportunity to present a fear of torture or other mistreatment.

In D.V.D v. DHS, federal courts are considering whether the federal government must give people notice and a chance to explain why they fear being deported to a third country. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an order preventing the government from deporting someone to a third country without such notice and process. The impact of this “disastrous ruling” is that the U.S. government may now swiftly–without process–deport people to third countries.

• U.S. federal courts have ordered the Trump administration to try to bring two people back to the U.S. from CECOT:
  • First, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to bring back Kilmar Garcia Abrego, a national of El Salvador. Mr. Garcia Abrego was sent to CECOT in violation of a court order and was returned to the U.S. on June 6th. The Department of Justice has brought criminal charges against Mr. Garcia Abrego, in a case that it appears has led a senior federal prosecutor to resign.
  • Second, on April 23, a different federal judge ordered the U.S. government to bring back a young man using the pseudonym “Cristian.” In Cristian’s case, when the government sent him to CECOT they broke their promise in a 2024 settlement agreement in another case about people who entered as unaccompanied children (J.O.P. v DHS).