El Salvador Says for First Time That U.S. Controls Fate of Jailed Deportees

The Washington Post

12:11 JST, July 8, 2025

Salvadoran officials have said for the first time that more than 130 Venezuelan migrants who have been detained for months in a megaprison in El Salvador remain under the responsibility of the United States, according to a court document filed Monday.

The acknowledgment was contained in a filing by the migrants lawyers in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. It marks a significant contradiction to the Trump administration’s repeated claims that it lacked the authority to bring back the migrants because they are no longer in U.S. custody.

The court document included the Salvadoran government’s response to a United Nations inquiry on behalf of four families, the lawyers said, who have claimed that a relative was forcibly disappeared when the Trump administration secretly sent them from U.S. immigration detention centers to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, in mid-March.

The Trump administration, which is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to house the migrants for a year, has not released a list of the people who were sent to the prison that day.

In the filing submitted to U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the Salvadoran government deferred responsibility for the relatives of the four families – and other migrants in their custody – to the Trump administration.

“The jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these people lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” the Salvadoran authorities said, according to the document.

“El Salvador said out loud what everyone knew: The United States is in charge of the Venezuelans shipped off in the middle of the night back in March,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and lead counsel in the case.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The legal case focuses on the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old law that allows the government to circumvent legal due process for non-U. S. citizens who it determines are a national security threat and remove them from the country.

That law has previously been invoked exclusively during times of war. The Trump administration has argued that the migrants deported under the statute are members of the Venezuela-based gang “Tren de Aragua,” and asserted the gang is carrying out an “invasion” in the United States at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have determined that Maduro is not directing the gang.

In the court filing, the ACLU and its co-counsel, Democracy Forward Foundation, allege that the Trump administration was aware of the Salvadoran government’s statements to the United Nations and chose not to share the information with the court because U.S. officials are copied in the Salvadoran responses, which are dated in April.

“The documents filed with the court today show that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people,” said Skye Perryman, chief executive and president of Democracy Forward.

Federal courts in several states have temporarily halted deportations in their jurisdictions under the Alien Enemies Act. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard arguments in the case and appeared ready to back the Trump administration’s authority to invoke the law – potentially sending the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that migrants deemed subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act be given sufficient time to legally contest their removal, but it has not ruled on whether Trump’s invocation of the law is legal.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said the Trump’s Jan. 20 proclamation declaring an invasion on the border cannot be used to prevent migrants from applying for asylum.

The Trump administration has brought back one migrant it sent to the Salvadoran prison: Kilmar Abrego García, a citizen of El Salvador, who was deported despite a court order preventing his removal. Administration officials called the move an administrative error but initially said it was unable to bring him back.

He was transferred back to the United States last month and charged with human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty.