Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later
Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador.
The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an infamous megaprison known for human rights abuses that is completely cut off from the outside world.
Sigaran has no known criminal record in El Salvador. But for an entire year, he has remained imprisoned with no access to a lawyer, no contact with his family and no prospect of a trial before a judge, according to human rights lawyer Kelvi Zambrano. He was deported under an agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that became one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive and attention-drawing immigration enforcement initiatives in his early months in office.
Little is known about the exact whereabouts of the deported Salvadorans who are imprisoned. Relatives and lawyers of some of the men told The Washington Post that they have had no contact with their detained loved ones and have been unable to confirm where they are being held. [Continue reading…]