Attorneys & Advocates Discuss the Harms of the Trump Administration’s Forced Disappearances to El Salvador

Washington, D.C., May 6, 2025 –  On May 6, members of the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign, advocates, and attorneys, held a press call to discuss the Trump administration’s forced disappearances of people to El Salvador, including individuals with pending asylum cases in the United States, and longstanding community members ripped from their homes and families with no due process. 

Since March 15, the Trump administration has disappeared over 280 people to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the CECOT, well-known for its abusive conditions and use of torture, reportedly paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to incarcerate them. The U.S. government has yet to release details of its agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and has refused to confirm the names of those sent to the CECOT. 

The #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign calls on our lawmakers to resist the Trump administration’s cruel agenda, call for an end to this illegal scheme, and demand that all those disappeared to El Salvador are safely returned to the United States. 

“From targeting green card holders for Constitutionally protected speech to disappearing people with Temporary Protected Status or pending asylum claims to foreign prisons in El Salvador, President Trump is driving our country toward a constitutional crisis. Andry Hernandez Romero and Maiker Espinoza were just two of the many individuals who were wrongfully deported under the pretext of an unsubstantiated ‘invasion,’” said Andrea Flores, Vice President of Immigration Policy and Campaigns at FWD.us. “Members of Congress and elected officials across the country must unequivocally call for the safe return of those unlawfully disappeared and stripped of their legal protections. There remains no legal, public safety, or national security justification for the El Salvador agreement, and every day it is in place, Americans are in danger of this Administration ignoring their due process rights. We cannot allow the Administration to continue to defy multiple court orders any longer.”

“My client, Edicson Quintero Chacón, was in the middle of an ongoing legal process, asking a federal court to review the legality of his prolonged detention. But instead of allowing this case to proceed in court, the U.S. government disappeared Edicson to El Salvador’s CECOT mega prison,” said Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council. “Deporting people to languish in an overseas prison, in an attempt to deprive U.S. courts of their historic role reviewing the legality of imprisonment by the U.S. government, is an appalling violation of the rights and protections offered by our legal system. The U.S. Constitution does not allow any person to be disappeared and imprisoned incommunicado by the government. When the U.S. government strips the most basic rights away from people like Edicson, it undermines the foundation of rule of law in our democracy.”

“I think it’s clear that the United States doesn’t suffer from a lack of detention facilities. The Salvadoran prison system, however, operates outside the rule of law and at the discretion of President Bukele, which allows people to be disappeared,” said Noah Bullock, Executive Director of Cristosal, "To dissuade or terrorize immigrant populations, the risk of being in the United States as a migrant is the risk of being disappeared into a prison whose very design and administration is to create a state of permanent detention and punishment.”“

“The United States should not be in the business of disappearing anyone to torture," said Robyn Barnard, Senior Director of Refugee Advocacy at Human Rights First. “The people who were rendered to the CECOT had been detained in ICE custody when they suddenly vanished. They had no opportunity to notify their relatives, speak with their counsel, or contest the allegations or their disappearance. The U.S. government continues to conceal the fate and whereabouts of these individuals, despite their complicity and control over what happened, and continues to happen, to them. The United States must cease these disappearances and bring back those rendered to the CECOT, and to other third countries, so that they may have their fair chance in court and be reunited with their loved ones.”

“The administration has circumvented due process in order to quickly disappear people into a notoriously brutal black hole. This is something we see in movies and dictatorships,” said Michelle Brané, Executive Director of Together & Free. “The families of those sent to CECOT are desperate to hear from their loved ones. They are fathers, mothers, brothers, and children whose loved ones have physically disappeared into a black hole of mistreatment, but are very much on their minds every day. Due process and humane treatment applies to everyone. It is what makes America great. Every American should be concerned when our government decides to ignore it.”

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