Moment alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua are hauled into El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center
This is the moment alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua were hauled into El Salvadors notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre.
This is the moment alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua were hauled into El Salvadors notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre.
The United States sent over 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang to be imprisoned, President Nayib Bukele said.
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country, he said on X.
He shared a video of several men in handcuffs and shackles being transferred from a plane to a heavily guarded convoy.
The gang has been linked to kidnapping, extortion, organised crime and contract killings.
Bukele, in a meeting last month with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, offered to house prisoners from the United States in his country.
The iron-fisted leader has seen soaring popularity in his Latin American country for a successful crackdown on criminal gangs, but has faced criticism from human rights groups.
He said in his post that the alleged gang members had been sent to the countrys maximum security Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT).
This is the moment alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua were hauled into El Salvadors notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre
The United States sent over 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang to be imprisoned, President Nayib Bukele said
The arrival of alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua at the Terrorism Confinement Centre
Rubio said in a separate statement that hundreds of violent criminals were sent out of our country.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador for playing a pivotal role in this transfer.
He added that as part of the transfer, the United States had also sent two top leaders of another gang, MS-13, to El Salvador, plus 21 of its most wanted to face justice in their homeland.
The $100 million penitentiary, the largest in Latin America, was constructed over a span of seven months in 2022 as part of Bukeles plan to reign in street gangs after more than 60 people were murdered on March 26, 2022.
The following day, Bukele declared a State of Exception, which granted powers to the police and military as alleged gang members, including those belonging to the MS-13 and Barrio 18, were rounded up in raids without court orders and stripped away rights such as freedom of assembly and communication privacy.
The Terrorism Confinement Centre is located on 410 acres of land, including 57 that were set aside to build eight pavilions surrounded by a 36-foot-tall and 1.3-mile-long wall.
It houses at least 13,000 inmates, with a capacity for 40,000, eclipsing the Marmara Penitentiaries Campus in Istanbul, Turkey.
The mega-prison is equipped with a system that blocks inmates from contacting the outside world with cellphones.
To enter the jail, staffers, guards and prisoners have to go through a complex registration system before they travel through three sections safeguarded by gates.
Jail cells with steel bars are split among the eight cell blocks and can hold up to 100 detainees.
Each cell comes equipped with 80 bare iron bunks - mattresses are not included - along with two toilets and two sinks.
Bukele, in a meeting last month with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio , offered to house prisoners from the United States in his country
The gang has been linked to kidnapping, extortion, organised crime and contract killings
An alleged member of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua being shaved upon his arrival at the Terrorism Confinement Centre
Every pavilion also has its own windowless cell where unruly prisoners are sent.
Gang members spend 23 and a half hours locked in their overcrowded cells, with just 30 minutes to stretch - chained in the middle of the hallway.
Within the cells, the temperature can reach a staggering 95 degree during the day, and there is no other source of ventilation.
Stunning images taken from within the complex usually show inmates shirtless in white shorts as they attempt to keep cool.
Dubbed a black hole of human rights by critics, the facility has drawn widespread condemnation for allegedly ignoring international prisoner rights.
Miguel Sarre, a former member of the UN Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture, slammed the facility as a concrete and steel pit.
It comes after Donald Trump invoked wartime authorities to expel migrants. Trump signed an order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on Friday, but it was not publicly announced until Saturday.
The wartime authority allows a president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation, but has been invoked only three times before during major international conflicts, including World War I and II.
Civil rights groups sued to block the order, with a federal judge on Saturday granting a temporary suspension, apparently as planes were already headed to El Salvador.
The statement gives Trumps Attorney General Pam Bondi 60 days to enact the ruling making all Tren de Aragua gang members subject to immediate apprehension, detention and removal.
Civil rights groups sued to block the order, with a federal judge on Saturday granting a temporary suspension, apparently as planes were already headed to El Salvador
Tren de Aragua gang tattoos (pictured above) were part of a Department of Homeland Security bulletin that was shared with federal agents
The Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Terrorism Confinement Centre)
The detention and expulsion order will apply to all Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members who are over 14 and not naturalised US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
But the ACLU and an allied group, Democracy Forward, asked the US District Court in Washington to bar the deportations - arguing that the 1798 act was not intended for use in peacetime.
Judge James Boasberg on Saturday issued to a 14-day halt to any deportation under the new order.
Bondi slammed the ruling, saying in a statement that it disregards well-established authority regarding President Trumps power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.
El Salvador already agreed this week to take up to 300 migrants that the Trump administration designated as gang members.
In invoking the act, Trump declared Tren de Aragua as targets, contending it is a hostile force noting members of the gang were conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States with the goal of destabilising the nation.
DailyMail.com was the first news organisation in the US to report on TdA arriving in America over a year ago, however, the gang became a household name after video of them storming an apartment near Denver surfaced in August.
The sweeping wartime authority allows the president broader leeway on policy and executive action and will enable him to speed up mass deportations of people and pushes his promised crackdown on immigration into higher gear.
Trump had pledged to use the Alien Enemies Act during his presidential campaign, and immigration groups were braced for it.
Under Trumps proclamation, all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are determined to be members of the gang, are within the United States and are not naturalised or lawful permanent residents of the country are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.
The act has only ever been used three times before, all during wars.
The Prairie View Police Department arrested three suspected Tren de Aragua associates last month who were wanted for their alleged involvement in multi-state sex trafficking ring operated by Tren de Aragua
The FBI arrest a suspected Tren de Aragua member last month in Houston
Several properties across the Denver area were raided as part of the Tren de Aragua crackdown also last month
Gang members wait to be taken to their cells after 2,000 gang members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center in February 2023
Its most recent application was during World War II, when it was used to incarcerate Germans and Italians as well as for the mass internment of around 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American civilians.
It was also used during World War I and the War of 1812.
The Trump administration in February designated Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and six other criminal groups as global terrorist organisations.
Saturdays directive said that Tren de Aragua has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens.
Trump argued in his declaration that it is justified because he contends the Tren de Aragua gang has ties to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Trump made the threat posed by the gang a regular feature of his campaign speeches as evidence of what he called a spike in migrant crime although numerous studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.
Over the years, Venezuelan national and local authorities have ceded ever-greater control over their territories to transnational criminal organisations, including TdA, Trumps statement reads.
The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.