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nayib bukele
Seeking $56 Million, Legal Migrant Claims ICE Intentionally Sent Him to Salvadoran Prison
“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison," said one attorney for the plaintiff.
Mar 31, 2026
A Utah law firm said Tuesday that it plans to sue the US government for its allegedly unlawful detention and deportation of a Venezuelan immigrant who was sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its torture and abuse of inmates.
“Our client is a young Venezuelan man who came into the US legally to escape threats of violence by the Venezuelan government against his family for their opposition to the Maduro regime," said Brent Ward, an attorney at Parker & McConkie, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped by US forces during a January invasion of his country.
Ward said that the client—identified by the pseudonym "Johnny Hernandez"—is seeking $56 million in damages and "has no criminal record either in the US or in Venezuela."
A man entered the U.S. legally, had no criminal record, and was still sent to one of the world's most dangerous prisons for four months. Parker & McConkie is pursuing $56 million in justice on his behalf.www.parkerandmcconkie.com/blog/parker-...#CivilRights #JusticeForJohnny #Immigration #CECOT
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— Parker & McConkie | Personal Injury Law (@parkermcconkie.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Hernandez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and subsequently deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, central El Salvador, where he allegedly suffered torture and other abuse.
“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison where he suffered torture, shooting, beatings, and solitary confinement," Ward stated. "When the US government knowingly and purposefully violates the law by detaining and deporting innocent individuals on false charges and is not held responsible, the individual rights of not just legal immigrants but all Americans are placed in jeopardy."
"Our client suffered catastrophic injuries in CECOT from which he will never fully recover," the lawyer said. "Failing to demand accountability now places all Americans in jeopardy in the future.”
The impending lawsuit comes as ICE proposes to literally warehouse up to 10,000 arrested immigrants in a "megacenter" in Salt Lake City, Utah. Opponents have compared the 833,000-square foot facility to a concentration camp akin to the Topaz War Relocation Center, a harsh, desolate desert prison where Japanese Americans and Japanese people living in the Western US were forcibly interned during World War II.
The case also follows last week's filing of a lawsuit by Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. Like Hernandez, León Rengel—who is seeking $1.3 million in damages—was in the US legally when he was arrested by federal immigration authorities.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently said on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others that, of the 9,000 Salvadorans expelled from the US since the beginning of last year, “only 10.5% had a conviction in the United States for a violent or potentially violent crime.”
The Salvadoran investigative journalism outlet El Faro—which, along with its staff, has been the target of sweeping government persecution—last year published a report on CECOT, citing one former prisoner who said that inmates are “committing suicide out of desperation.”
At least one deported Salvadoran—longtime Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García—was wrongfully expelled due to what the Trump administration called an “administrative error.”
The Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT under a multimillion-dollar agreement between the Trump administration and the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
While Trump claimed—often without evidence—that the Venezuelan deportees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, only about 3% of them had violent criminal convictions in the United States, and Department of Homeland Security records show that the Trump administration knew it.
In July 2025, El Salvador released 252 Venezuelans imprisoned at CECOT and sent them to Venezuela in a prisoner swap that saw Maduro's government free 10 US citizens and permanent residents whom it jailed. Many of the repatriated Venezuelans said they suffered torture, sexual assault, severe beatings, and other abuse at CECOT.
Last December, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by deporting the Venezuelans without due process.
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Trump Deportees 'Sent to a Black Hole' of Forced Disappearance in El Salvador
“The desperation of families to find disappeared loved ones evokes the darkest days of dictatorships in Latin America,” said one human rights campaigner.
Mar 16, 2026
The administration of right-wing Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is arbitrarily detaining and forcibly disappearing Salvadorans deported from the United States, a leading rights group said Monday.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's mass deportation of Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others that, of the 9,000 Salvadorans expelled from the US since the beginning of last year, "only 10.5% had a conviction in the United States for a violent or potentially violent crime."
Yet according to HRW, these deportees—most of whom were illegally expelled without the requisite due process—were "immediately detained in El Salvador" upon arrival and "have not been allowed to communicate with their relatives or lawyers."
"None of the relatives or lawyers have had any indication from the authorities that the men have been brought before a judge since their arrival," HRW said. "Some have not been informed of where their loved ones are held, or why. In five cases, relatives learned about deportees’ whereabouts only though litigation at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)."
HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus said that "whatever the criminal history of these Salvadoran men, they have a right to due process, to be taken before a judge, and their relatives are entitled to know where they are being held and why."
"Deportation cannot mean enforced disappearance," Goebertus added.
Many of the deportees have been sent to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca in central El Salvador. HRW and others have documented a range of serious human rights abuses committed by staff at the megaprison, including torture, sexual violence, and brutal beatings.
The Salvadoran investigative journalism outlet El Faro—which, along with its staff, has been the target of sweeping government persecution—last year published a report on CECOT, citing one former prisoner who said that inmates are "committing suicide out of desperation."
While the Trump administration has alleged that many of those expelled are members of MS-13, a street gang founded in the 1980s by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles, neither US nor Salvadoran authorities have provided much evidence to substantiate claims regarding many of the deportees.
At least one deported Salvadoran—longtime Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García—was wrongfully expelled due to what the Trump administration called an "administrative error." Abrego García said he was tortured at CECOT before a US federal judge ordered his release last December.
For its new report, HRW interviewed relatives of many of the Salvadoran deportees, one of whose sisters said she "kept calling the migrant shelter in El Salvador, but they never gave me any information."
"So I filed a complaint with the [Salvadoran] Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office,” she said. “An official told me that my brother was deported on March 15 [but] because of the state of emergency they would not provide any information.”
The mother of another Salvadoran deportee told HRW that she struggled to find legal representation for her son.
“I started looking for lawyers in El Salvador, but several told me they could not take those cases because they feared government reprisals,” she said.
“I called several institutions, the attorney general’s office, the Ombudsperson’s Office, a migrant shelter, and government ministries in El Salvador, but they gave me no information," the woman added. "At the Ombudsperson’s Office, they told me that due to the state of emergency, they were not obligated to provide me with information. I feel abandoned.”
HRW Americas Program deputy director Juan Pappier told The Washington Post Sunday that “these people have been sent to a black hole, a court system with no due process."
Goebertus echoed Pappier's language, saying Monday: “The desperation of families to find disappeared loved ones evokes the darkest days of dictatorships in Latin America. The United States should stop casting people into the black hole of El Salvador’s prison system.”
While credited for dramatically reducing crime in what was not too long ago the world's murder capital, the state of emergency—officially the State of Exception—declared by Bukele in 2022 has been denounced by human rights defenders. It purportedly targets criminals, but others—including journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates, environmental activists, nonprofit workers, political critics, clergy, labor organizers, and community leaders—have been persecuted under the decree.
Originally authorized for 30 days, Bukele has repeatedly extended the State of Exception, fueling accusations of authoritarianism.
HRW noted Monday that Bukele's government has used the emergency decree "to suspend, among others, the rights to be informed promptly of the grounds for arrest, to remain silent, to legal representation, and the requirement to present any detainee before a judge within 72 hours of arrest."
In addition to Salvadorans, hundreds of Venezuelans were sent to CECOT under an agreement between the Trump and Bukele administrations. The US paid millions of dollars to El Salvador to accept the deportees, who Trump claimed—often without evidence—were members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
However, only about 3% of the deported Venezuelans had been convicted of violent criminal offenses in the United States—and the Trump administration knew it, according to Department of Homeland Security records.
Last July, El Salvador released 252 Venezuelans imprisoned at CECOT and sent them to Venezuela in a prisoner swap that saw the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro free 10 US citizens and permanent residents jailed in the South American nation.
Following their repatriation, many of the Venezuelans said they endured torture, sexual assault, severe beatings, and other abuse at CECOT.
Last December, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by deporting the Venezuelans without due process.
Last week, the International Group of Experts for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations Under the State of Exception in El Salvador (GIPES)—an independent panel of jurists established in 2024—published a report which found that "the serious human rights violations committed by the government of El Salvador during the state of emergency may indeed constitute crimes against humanity because of the widespread and systematic nature of the attacks, their commission against the civilian population, and their commission as part of a state policy or plan."
International Commission of Jurists general secretary Santiago Canton—a member of the panel—said that “the Bukele model is sustained by the dismantling of the rule of law to systematically violate human rights without institutional restraints."
"In the very short term, it may appear to improve security, but it inevitably weakens the very security it claims to protect," Canton added. "The danger is that this approach is increasingly being promoted across Latin America by authoritarian and unscrupulous political leaders as a solution to crime."
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Can Sheinbaum Avoid A Death Spiral After the El Mencho Killing?
On one hand, demonstrating the ability to confront organized crime may help counter the narrative that progressive governments are soft on violence. On the other, history suggests that decapitation strategies rarely defeat cartels.
Mar 04, 2026
On February 22, 2026, Mexican special forces in Tapalpa, Jalisco, authorized by left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum and acting on intelligence from the US military, killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, Nom de Guerre “El Mencho,” the 59-year-old leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the most-wanted man in Mexico.
Within hours, the cartel put up roadblocks, arson attacks, and running gun battles across a dozen states, ravaging Tapalpa and other cities. By the time the violence subsided, over 70 people were dead, including 25 Mexican National Guard troops. The entire country is holding its breath as it prepares to enter a new phase of its decades-long Drug War.
Does decapitating a cartel end the Drug War?
The operation was also the culmination of a strategy that Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had promised to abandon, namely, the militarized war on drugs that since 2006 has left between 350,000 and 400,000 Mexicans dead and more than 130,000 disappeared. Instead, while making some initial welcome gestures, he militarized the Southern Border, created the National Guard, and continued the War on Drugs.
Removing El Mencho may weaken CJNG in the short term. But it could also ignite the next phase of Mexico’s drug war, one that extends far beyond the country’s borders and deeper into the Western Hemisphere.
The Mexican drug war has never been Mexico's responsibility alone. It is the product of an insatiable American thirst for drugs that has only intensified with the opioid crisis, as fentanyl has flooded US streets, claiming tens of thousands of lives annually, with support from Big Pharma. The United States remains the world’s largest consumer market for narcotics; American demand generates billions of dollars annually for trafficking organizations.
Mexican cartels such as the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel now supply fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin to a US market whose demand keeps increasing, according to new reporting.
American guns are also at the center of this crisis. There are exactly two legal gun stores in all of Mexico, operating under strict military supervision. Across the border, in the four US border states, there are more than 9,000 legal gun sale points.
An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 guns are trafficked from the United States into Mexico each year. Roughly 70% originate north of the border. These include .50-caliber rifles capable of piercing armored vehicles and downing helicopters; many of them were from the American military. A new raid on a CNJG ammo depot revealed that 47% of the ammunition came directly from one US Army plant in Kansas City. That very same ammo was used to kill 13 police officers in Michoacán in 2019.
The CJNG now dominates 23 out of Mexico’s 32 states, with operations stretching from the Pacific Coast all the way to the Northern border. The cartel's estimated worth exceeds $20 billion, drawn not only from drugs but from a diversified portfolio of extortion, petroleum theft, human trafficking, and kidnapping.
It has used extreme force and military-level tactical planning against its rivals, including the state itself. In 2015, it shot down a Mexican military helicopter in Jalisco. It has assassinated mayors, attacked police convoys with improvised armored vehicles, and used drones and explosives against state security forces.
Internally, polls suggest support for the operation is between 80 and 90%. After years of feeling helpless before cartel violence, many Mexicans welcome any action that produces “results.” With this, we see the rise of “penal populism” across Latin America, where electorates increasingly embrace tough-on-crime approaches, even when those approaches destroy democracy and human rights.
The high popularity of El Salvador's right-wing dictator Nayib Bukele, whose approval ratings have hovered around 90%, testifies to the political appeal of iron-fist tactics, regardless of their clear governance costs. Bukele's mass incarceration model, where tens of thousands have been jailed without due process in inhumane conditions where torture is common, has become a model that politicians across the region now invoke, including in Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Peru.
That comes despite his success being predicated on secret deals with gangs, not on a War on Drugs—most countries that have tried his militarized tactics have suffered increases in the violent crime and homicide rates, at the same time as their economies have become increasingly unequal and democratic societies have cratered.
Externally, President Donald Trump has made clear his view that “cartels are runnning Mexico” and that Sheinbaum and other Latin American leaders should go to war with them, otherwise he will do it for them. His administration has designated Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and considered military intervention in Mexico. A US intervention would be disastrous for both Mexico and Sheinbaum, so the El Mencho operation is the price they settled on.
To add insult to injury, this summer, Mexico will host numerous World Cup matches, including four in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state. The Sheinbaum government is trying to give the allure of tightening security ahead of the games.
She has modeled aspects of her approach on Brazil. Before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro launched aggressive “pacification” campaigns in favelas, military occupations that temporarily suppressed violence but failed to address its roots while killing high rates of civilians and eroding civil liberties. The War on Drugs has not stopped there, either. We have to wait and see if Mexico follows this tragic pattern.
Across Latin America, the right has successfully framed security as a question of toughness versus weakness, where, as Bukele would put it, “All the gangs know is violence,” and thus must be met with violence. This framing leaves progressive governments perpetually on the defensive, forced to prove their bravado by adopting policies that at the very least, in theory, fly in the face of leftist principles.
The left's consistent (and successful) approach, emphasizing socioeconomic development, public health interventions, drug decriminalization, negotiation, and targeted intelligence rather than mass militarization, has struggled to gain traction in a climate driven by right-wing narratives and fearmongering.
The fundamental problem is that leftist programs take years to bear actual results, while voters demand immediate security. The right, meanwhile, offers quick and strong-handed solutions that reassure voters. It is harder to kill monsters with microloan programs and harm reduction clinics than with tanks and M-16s.
When Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched his war on drugs in 2006, he targeted the Gulf Cartel and its armed wing, Los Zetas. The kingpin strategy eliminates cartel leaders, but each decapitation meant groups splintered, and each splintering produced more violence, creating an endless loop of violence until neoliberal President Enrique Peña Nieto was able to sign pacts with certain gangs before resuming the military approach.
During this period, the number of major cartels grew from about half a dozen to more than 200, operating across the country and the entire world. The homicide rate tripled, while many border cities have homicide rates well over 100 per 100,000. Now, hundreds of thousands are dead as a direct result.
Mexico finds itself once again at this crossroads, where it must choose wisely. El Mencho’s bras droit, “El Tuli,” was killed in a clash with security forces hours after. But, the pattern suggests that new leaders will emerge, and the violence will continue. Cartels are resilient, and can adapt to new leadership, new business structures, and market forces very reactively. Taking out one leader, or even the drug trade, won’t put them out of business.
Left-wing governments have struggled to respond without appearing weak. Some voices, particularly those outside of direct political power like academics, human rights advocates, and a few leftist intellectuals, have pointed out the dangers of returning to kingpin strategies, the inevitability of retaliation, and the way military operations invariably claim civilian lives.
So far, however, the Sheinbaum coalition and the left in Mexico have, for the most part, supported the operation, praying that embracing these shows of force can help the left reclaim dominance over the security debate. But, ceding ground to the right on security might risk alienating the rest of the left; shifting the Overton window to the right; and making politics, rather than policy solutions, determine the direction of Mexico’s Drug War.
Sheinbaum’s operation thus creates a profound paradox.
On one hand, demonstrating the ability to confront organized crime may help counter the narrative that progressive governments are soft on violence. On the other, history suggests that decapitation strategies rarely defeat cartels.
Removing El Mencho may weaken CJNG in the short term. But it could also ignite the next phase of Mexico’s drug war, one that extends far beyond the country’s borders and deeper into the Western Hemisphere.
Can you win the politics of security without reproducing the failures of the war on drugs? It may buy Sheinbaum and the left time to continue expanding the welfare state, strengthening institutions, and foolproof Mexican democracy, but it may also open the door for further weaponization of security to destroy that very progress later on.
The better alternative may be to instead embrace a true leftist, principled defense of nonviolent solutions, or, to theoretically and politically justify a security progressivism. Such will be the test of the Latin American left in the wake of rising right-wing populism on the back of security fears.
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