A Human Rights Watch report reveals that citizens deported from the U.S. are being detained, held incommunicado, and tortured by the government of Nayib Bukele
The last time a Salvadoran mother spoke with her son, he informed her from the United States that his deportation was imminent. It was March 13, 2025. After 11 years of living in the North, the 28-year-old was returning to the country he had fled as little more than a child to escape violence.
Since that day, the silence has been absolute. When she sought information about his whereabouts from various government agencies, the response was always the same: “We cannot provide you with any information due to the state of exception.”
“I feel helpless,” the mother told Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The Gang Stigma
The Trump administration has justified these actions by alleging that several of the deportees are members of the MS-13 gang. Prominent among them is César Humberto López Larios, alias “El Greñas,” a notorious criminal leader whose identity was publicly disclosed by Washington.
However, HRW warns that this case is the exception, not the rule. Neither Washington nor San Salvador has provided evidence linking the other missing individuals to terrorist organizations. Their families insist that many of them are working-class individuals with no criminal ties.
Data analysis from ICE reveals a different reality: of the 9,000 Salvadorans deported since January 2025, only 10.5% had convictions for violent crimes. The vast majority were expelled for minor infractions or simply due to their immigration status.
Many of those currently detained had previously served sentences for drug possession. Others—ironically—had fled El Salvador as children specifically to escape threats of forced recruitment and extortion at the hands of the very gangs they are now accused of belonging to.
Read: The majority of migrants detained by ICE have no criminal record
Documented Abuses
The chaotic nature of the system was laid bare in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García. He was deported on March 15, 2025—due to what the White House later termed an “administrative error”—following a court order that was not complied with in a timely manner.
Following a new order from a federal judge, Ábrego was returned to the United States in June. His lawyers alleged in court that the young man suffered severe physical abuse during his brief and violent detention in Salvadoran prisons.
Ultimately, a Maryland court ordered his release from ICE custody in December. His case stands as living testimony to what occurs behind the walls where the rest of the disappeared remain hidden under the state of exception.
The CECOT: The Epicenter of Torture
The whereabouts of the disappeared remain a distressing puzzle. After months of silence, El Salvador informed the IACHR that four men were being held at the Santa Ana prison, and one at the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT).
Other families have been forced to resort to desperate measures to confirm that their relatives are still alive. Some claim to have identified their loved ones in propaganda videos posted on social media by President Nayib Bukele.
In three of the cases documented by HRW, there is not a single clue regarding the individuals’ whereabouts. Salvadoran authorities have gone so far as to claim that the men are waiting in prison “for the United States to resolve their immigration status”—a legally baseless argument.
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The Collapse of Judicial Recourse
The Salvadoran justice system appears to have effectively shut down. Lawyers in El Salvador admit to families that they are afraid to take on these cases for fear of retaliation. The right to legal counsel has been all but nullified.
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has rejected *habeas corpus* petitions based on vague technical grounds. In other instances, it has simply opted for administrative silence, leaving mothers and wives in absolute limbo.
Under the state of exception—in effect since 2022—basic rights have been suspended. There is no longer an obligation to disclose the grounds for detention, nor to bring the detainee before a competent judge within the statutory 72-hour period.
A Call to Halt the Machinery
“The desperation of these families evokes the darkest days of the dictatorships in Latin America,” stated Juanita Goebertus, Director of HRW. The organization demands that the United States halt these immediate transfers into a system devoid of safeguards.
The use of wartime laws to expedite deportations is consigning vulnerable individuals to a system of torture. The international community observes with alarm how deportation has, in practice, become synonymous with disappearance.
Absent proof of life and due process, every deportation flight bound for El Salvador today poses a risk of irreversible rights violations. The report concludes that the United States must cease fueling this institutional “black hole.”
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