U.S. Government Illegally Detains Father of Two in Notorious Salvadoran Prison

Columbus, GA – The American Immigration Council, National Immigration Project, and the Center for Constitutional Rights today filed an amended habeas corpus petition on behalf of Mr. Edicson David Quintero Chacón. He is one of more than two hundred people the U.S. government has been paying to imprison, incommunicado, at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) since mid-March. Despite his pending federal lawsuit challenging his indefinite detention, the U.S. government sent him to El Salvador, where he could remain in prison for the rest of his life. Mr. Quintero’s amended petition seeks his release from CECOT.

Mr. Quintero, originally from Venezuela, is a 28-year-old carpenter, fisherman, and father of two young children. He turned himself in to immigration officers when he came to the U.S. border in 2024. ICE later took him into custody during a routine ICE check-in and held him while an immigration court was determining whether he should be deported from the United States solely because he lacked immigration status. Eventually, he gave up fighting his deportation to Venezuela in immigration court. After eight difficult months in ICE custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA, he filed a habeas petition in February 2025. He asked a federal court to order that the government could not keep holding him for no reason, since deportations to Venezuela were not possible. Instead of responding to Mr. Quintero’s lawsuit, the government sent him to CECOT, where his living nightmare continues, and argued the court may no longer review the case.

According to Juanita Goebertus, Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, who submitted a sworn declaration along with today’s filing on behalf of Mr. Quintero, CECOT, like other Salvadoran prisons is notorious for “torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.”

“My family and I can't sleep or eat because we're thinking about Edicson,” said one of Mr. Quintero’s family members. “He's a loving person, responsible and hardworking. I often wonder if he's eaten yet, what he's eaten, or how he's feeling. This is affecting me emotionally and physically and I can't rest. Edicson was terrified of remaining stuck in immigration detention in the U.S. or Guantanamo, but imprisonment at CECOT is worse than anything we could have imagined.”

“Human Rights Watch is not aware of any person who has been allowed to leave after entering custody at CECOT,” said Rebecca Cassler, Senior Attorney at the American Immigration Council. “The U.S. government is trying to do at CECOT what it cannot do at home—put people in jail for life because they lack immigration status. Mr. Quintero’s detention is a breathtaking departure from the rule of law.”

“Mr. Quintero should never have been detained in the first place,” said Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, Southeast Regional Attorney at the National Immigration Project. “His detention in CECOT has no legal basis. It also shocks the conscience and shows clear disregard for the dignity and humanity of the people the government has in its custody.” 

“The Trump administration’s new tactic of sending migrants to CECOT, where they are held incommunicado and subject to torturous conditions, is from the same playbook as the incommunicado detention and torture the Center for Constitutional Rights has been challenging at Guantánamo since the early 1990s. Mr. Quintero is the victim of performative cruelty, and the habeas court has the power to require the United States government to do everything in its power to ensure his prompt release from CECOT,” said CJ Sandley, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Like everyone else who was forcibly taken to CECOT, Mr. Quintero was provided with no due process and no opportunity to contest his transfer to a foreign prison. The government had no basis for sending him to El Salvador in the first place. The continued detention of Mr. Quintero at the behest of the U.S. government is a clear violation of applicable laws, and illustrates the barbaric cruelty of the administration’s current approach to immigration. 

Read the petition here.

###