Human rights advocacy organizations filed an emergency petition on Friday with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, calling for urgent intervention and seeking the immediate release of hundreds of detainees transferred by the United States to an infamous mega-prison in El Salvador. The petition was filed on behalf of over a dozen families who report that migrants deported from the U.S. have been held for months without trial under harsh, inhumane conditions at the Salvadoran facility known as the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.
According to the filing, the Trump administration has, since mid-March, deported at least 288 individuals—most of them Venezuelan or Salvadoran migrants—to CECOT. Many of these detainees were in the midst of ongoing asylum or other protective cases in the United States; nevertheless, they were expelled without receiving appropriate legal process or meaningful judicial review. Human rights experts and family members assert that these expulsions constitute enforced disappearances—a clear breach of international human rights law.
The detainees have reportedly been held in total isolation from the outside world, unable to communicate with their relatives or legal counsel. Conditions at CECOT have been widely condemned, with previous investigations describing the prison’s environment as severely overcrowded and rife with abusive practices, including torture. Family members highlighted the grave psychological stress and emotional hardship caused by the disappearance and prolonged detention of their loved ones.
Four prominent U.S.-based human rights organizations—the Boston University School of Law International Human Rights Clinic, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the Global Strategic Litigation Council, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights—submitted the filing, formally requesting emergency “precautionary measures” from the Commission. They urged immediate interventions, including the swift release of all those detained after transferring from U.S. custody, the facilitation of contact between detainees and their families and attorneys, independent monitoring of conditions within CECOT, and assurances against further deportations or transfers that could jeopardize their human rights.
In a related statement, Bella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, condemned the deportations as “a moral and legal failure of two governments and a human rights emergency demanding global attention.” She emphasized the severity of individuals being stripped of rights, removed from their families, and summarily placed into an environment of known abuse without accountability or oversight.
U.S. immigration authorities transferred many of these detainees under a controversial multimillion-dollar agreement struck between former President Trump’s administration and that of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who himself has proclaimed to be the “world’s coolest dictator.” Under the pretext of public security and anti-gang initiatives, the Salvadoran government has invoked a sweeping “state of exception” since 2022, which critics describe as an alarming erosion of judicial independence, fair procedures, and human rights protections.
The Trump administration classifies roughly half the expelled individuals as “alien enemies,” utilizing the Alien Enemies Act—an obscure law dating back to the 18th century—to deny them standard legal protocols by alleging gang affiliations and even links to foreign adversaries. Such claims have faced widespread skepticism, given that the vast majority of detainees reportedly have no criminal record at all. Some deportees have even alleged in public statements and legal documents part of a broader pattern where something as benign as a common tattoo has been used to label individuals as gang members.
Litigation within the U.S. court system has produced mixed outcomes. Several judges have temporarily blocked deportations to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, and recent rulings from U.S. federal courts have demanded at minimum that detainees receive basic procedural rights, including the ability to challenge their deportation. The Supreme Court recently lifted a lower court’s injunction halting Alien Enemies Act deportations on a national level but required detainees to have legal mechanisms to contest their removal. Separately, federal lawsuits have challenged the processes behind these expulsions from multiple jurisdictions across the country.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration has shown open willingness to defy judicial rulings, notably in the ongoing case of detainee Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose deportation and detention the Supreme Court explicitly ordered reversed. Despite this order and Garcia’s recognized protections against deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem continues to declare the U.S. will never allow Garcia to set foot in the country again—a position critics charge as a direct violation of constitutional and international obligations.
Human rights advocates hope that increased international pressure from bodies such as the Inter-American Commission could prompt meaningful responses and set forth concrete actions to protect human rights. Earlier this year, international attention and similar petitions spurred Panama to provide humanitarian permits and better conditions for migrants expelled to their territory. Advocates hope to achieve similar outcomes in El Salvador, even though substantive enforcement by the Inter-American Commission is largely diplomatic, depending upon political willingness to honor human rights commitments rather than coercive authority.
