The United States flew 252 men here in March 2025 and they were taken to CECOT. El Salvador told the United Nations that legal responsibility lay with the sending state; a United States court found the two governments had behaved as principal and agent. No one held in El Salvador can complain to the Committee against Torture, and no international body may inspect its prisons.
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
Basis: a report by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal based on 190 interviews, findings by a United States federal court, and the Salvadoran state’s own position stated to two international bodies. Everyone sent from the United States to the Terrorism Confinement Centre in March 2025 has since been released. The designation stands because the arrangement that put them there has not been withdrawn, and because a person sent to El Salvador today has no route to an international complaint and no national mechanism to inspect where they are held.
From 190 interviews and 130 documented cases: beatings from arrival to release, with batons, fists and kicks, often in punishment cells detainees called the Island; men held incommunicado, without meaningful access to a lawyer or family, and removed from the tracking system of the agency that sent them. The Red Cross visited in May and June 2025, and detainees reported being beaten afterwards for having complained to it.
“the undisputed factual record indicates that the United States and El Salvador have behaved as principal and agent in the detention and subsequent release of Plaintiffs.” The court found the class “received constitutionally inadequate process”, and that at the prison detainees “often have no outside-world contact, including with their lawyers.”
El Salvador said it had merely “facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure” and that “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities”. The United States told the same court that disposition was a matter of El Salvador’s “sovereign discretion”. Each government says the other is responsible.
El Salvador acceded to the Convention against Torture on 17 June 1996 and has made neither the article 21 nor the article 22 declaration. No person in El Salvador can petition the Committee against Torture. El Salvador has also never signed the Optional Protocol, so there is no national preventive mechanism and no United Nations body may inspect its prisons.
Of more than 9,000 Salvadorans removed by the United States since January 2025, some were detained on arrival and their families told nothing. A mother: at the Ombudsman’s office “they told me that due to the state of emergency, they were not obligated to provide me with information.” Lawyers told her they could not take the case because they feared reprisals.
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a receiving state agrees to.
On 15 March 2025 the United States flew 252 Venezuelan men to El Salvador and they were taken to the Terrorism Confinement Centre, the prison known as CECOT. Twenty-three Salvadorans were removed on the same day. The Venezuelans were held for 125 days, without charge in El Salvador, and released on 18 July 2025 in an exchange in which Venezuela released ten United States nationals and eighty Venezuelan political prisoners. El Salvador received nothing in that exchange.
Arrangement. Documented, but its text has never been published. What exists are two exhibits quoted in a United States court opinion: El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry confirming it would “house” the men “for one (1) year, pending further decisions on their long-term disposition”, and a United States grant letter transferring $4.7 million for costs “associated with detaining” them.
Transferred. 252 Venezuelan men on 15 March 2025, of whom 137 were later certified as a class in the litigation. Twenty-three Salvadorans the same day. Reporting places at least one further transfer on 31 March 2025. The counts and dates given by different sources do not agree and this page sets them out rather than choosing between them.
People with protection among them. Documented. The United States acknowledged before the Supreme Court that one man removed that day was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal “was therefore illegal”.
Onward return. Documented. All 252 were moved on to Venezuela on 18 July 2025. Some are now in third countries. One man was returned to the United States on 6 June 2025.
On 12 November 2025 Human Rights Watch and Cristosal published a report based on 190 interviews conducted between 21 March and 2 September 2025, among them 40 men who had been held in CECOT, and documenting 130 cases. Both governments were written to on 18 September 2025 and neither replied before publication.
What the report documents is beating from the moment of arrival until the end of detention, with batons, fists and kicks, frequently in punishment cells the detainees called the Island; food that was not enough; the denial of basic hygiene and sanitation; limited access to health care and medicine; and men held incommunicado, without meaningful access to counsel or to their families, after being removed from the tracking system of the United States agency that had sent them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross visited in May and June 2025. That is the only documented instance of any monitor entering. Detainees reported that after those visits they were severely beaten in retaliation for having spoken to the Red Cross.
No text of any agreement between the United States and El Salvador has been published. It does not appear in Treaties in Force. Twelve United States senators asked the Secretary of State for “a copy of any and all agreements” on 15 May 2025 and recorded that the administration intended to provide “up to $15 million” to support the detention. On 31 December 2025 the Committee against Torture asked El Salvador for “information on the existence of a bilateral agreement with the United States of America regarding the transfer of Venezuelan nationals and persons from other countries”. That a United Nations treaty body had to ask, nine months in, whether the agreement exists is the clearest measure of how little is public.
Three different money figures appear in the record and the Coalition does not know which is right: $4.7 million actually transferred, according to the grant letter in the court file; as much as $6 million approved, according to press reports cited by the senators; up to $15 million intended, according to the senators’ own letter. They are different measures of different things and none of them has been reconciled.
What each government says about responsibility is the part of this record that matters most to a person held there. El Salvador told the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that it had “facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure” and that “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities”. The United States filed sworn declarations saying that “the detention and ultimate disposition of those detained in CECOT and other Salvadoran detention facilities are matters within the legal authority of El Salvador” and that El Salvador had “sovereign discretion” over it. The court credited those declarations in full and still concluded, on undisputed facts, that the two states “have behaved as principal and agent”.
J.G.G. v. Trump, No. 25-cv-766 (D.D.C.), memorandum opinion of 22 December 2025, at pages 11 to 24 and 37 to 40. The exhibits quoted are at ECF Nos. 177-10 and 177-11. Committee against Torture, list of issues prior to reporting, CAT/C/SLV/QPR/4, 31 December 2025, paragraph 14.
El Salvador has been under a state of exception since 27 March 2022. The Committee against Torture recorded that it suspends, among other things, the right to be informed promptly of the reasons for arrest, the right to remain silent, the right to legal representation, and the requirement that a detained person be brought before a judge within 72 hours, which was extended to fifteen days.
The numbers are contested and the Coalition gives all of them, with the body and the date, rather than the most severe. The Committee against Torture recorded more than 57,000 detained as at November 2022 and more than 90 deaths in custody. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recorded 73,000 detained between March 2022 and November 2023, and between 189 and 200 deaths, noting that there are no unanimous figures. Human Rights Watch recorded more than 90,000 detained, including more than 3,000 children, and at least 458 deaths, in February 2026. Amnesty International recorded more than 90,000 detained and at least 470 deaths in July 2026.
On outside inspection the record is short. The Inter-American Commission has made repeated requests to visit and recorded in June 2024 that it had not been possible to arrange one. Amnesty International was still calling in July 2026 for “unrestricted access for international human rights mechanisms to detention centres”. El Salvador has never signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, so it has no national preventive mechanism and the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture cannot visit at all.
This section is the practical heart of the page, and it begins with what is closed.
The Committee against Torture is closed to individuals. El Salvador acceded to the Convention on 17 June 1996 and has made no declaration under article 21 and none under article 22. Article 22 is the one that lets a person, or someone acting for them, complain. El Salvador appears in neither list in the depositary record. A person held in El Salvador cannot petition the Committee, and no amount of evidence changes that.
The Optional Protocol is closed too. El Salvador has neither signed nor ratified it. There is no national preventive mechanism to inspect a place of detention and no international body with a right of entry.
The Inter-American system is open, and it is the one that has worked. El Salvador has been a party to the American Convention on Human Rights since 23 June 1978 and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on 6 June 1995. In five cases documented by Human Rights Watch in March 2026, relatives learned where a man taken from the United States was being held only through proceedings at the Inter-American Commission. In October and December 2025 El Salvador told the Commission that four of them were at the Santa Ana prison and one at CECOT. That is the only mechanism on this page documented as having forced the Salvadoran state to say where a person is.
Domestic habeas has not worked. Petitions were filed with the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court in May, August and October 2025. The Chamber rejected one on the ground that the facts were not sufficiently precise and has not answered the others. The Inter-American Commission had already listed the ineffectiveness of habeas among its concerns in June 2024.
Courts in the United States have worked. They secured the return of one man to the United States on 6 June 2025 and were the forum in which the release of the 252 was litigated. For a person removed from the United States, the useful court may be the one they were removed from.
What follows is drawn from what is documented above and from the routes that have actually produced a result. It is not advice, and no page can tell a particular person what to do in their case.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
In the documented cases, the family’s difficulty was not proving mistreatment but establishing that the person was in El Salvador at all. Note the date of removal, any flight information, the last contact, and the name of any United States officer or lawyer involved. Identity documents in these cases were transferred to El Salvador with the person and, as at February 2026, had not been returned.
The Procuraduría para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos is the national human rights institution and takes individual complaints. A mother who went to it was told that under the state of exception it was not obliged to give her information. Record what you are told and by whom, with the date, because a refusal to say where a person is held is itself evidence.
This is the mechanism documented as having produced answers. In five cases it obtained from El Salvador the name of the prison where a person was held. It can also be asked for precautionary measures where there is a risk of irreparable harm. It is not quick and it is not certain, but on this record it is the one that has worked.
The releases and the one return in this record came from litigation in United States courts, not from anything inside El Salvador. If the person was removed from the United States, a lawyer there may have more purchase than a lawyer in San Salvador.
Lawyers told one family they could not take the case because they feared government reprisals. The head of Cristosal’s anti-corruption work was detained in 2025 and the organisation suspended its operations in the country. The director of the organisation that took the largest number of state of exception cases has left El Salvador.
Two of the organisations a reader would expect to find here are no longer working inside the country, one publishes no way of contacting it, and the national human rights institution has been documented refusing to say where a person was held. The Coalition sets that out rather than presenting a list that suggests more help exists than does.
Inside the country
Legal foundation, with a directorate for access to justice; still publishing on the state of exception and on torture in prisons
Checked 10 September 2026 · FESPAD, contact page
National human rights institution; takes individual complaints and has fourteen departmental offices. A family that went to it about a relative removed from the United States was told that under the state of exception it was not obliged to give information
Checked 10 September 2026 · PDDH
Free and confidential. Its mandate is asylum seekers and refugees, and nothing establishes that it can reach a person held incommunicado in a Salvadoran prison
Checked 10 September 2026 · UNHCR Help El Salvador
Working on these cases from outside El Salvador
Co-author of the November 2025 report on CECOT. It suspended operations inside El Salvador in July 2025 after the detention of its head of anti-corruption work, and now operates from outside the country. It takes individual case reports covering El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. It states that submitting a report does not create a lawyer and client relationship or guarantee that it will act
Checked 10 September 2026 · Cristosal, report a human rights violation
Socorro Jurídico Humanitario took more individual state of exception cases than any other organisation. It publishes no website and no contact details, and its director has left El Salvador. The Coalition names it because a reader may hear of it, and states plainly that it has found no way to reach it. The human rights institute of the Central American University is still publishing and could not be reached: both of its addresses failed on the Coalition’s side, one on a certificate error and one at the site’s own robots file. The public defender service of the Attorney General’s office returned an error to every request. These are open items and the Coalition will publish them when it can verify them.
Every entry below is a fact with a source.
The text of the arrangement. No treaty, no entry in Treaties in Force, no release under freedom of information law. Only two exhibits quoted in a court opinion.
The correct amount of money. $4.7 million, $6 million and $15 million are three measures of different things and the Coalition has reconciled none of them.
The correct total and the correct dates. 252 on 15 March; a class defined as 15 and 16 March; a transfer photographed on 31 March; more than 100 on the aircraft according to a concurring judge. The Coalition sets these side by side rather than choosing.
The number of deaths under the state of exception. More than 90, 189 to 200, at least 458, at least 470, from four bodies at four dates. A higher figure has circulated in reporting and the Coalition could not trace it to a primary document, so it does not appear here.
Where the 137 are now. Their own lawyers told the court in February 2026 that they could not say how many are still in Venezuela.
That the men are not what the United States said they were. The plaintiffs did not ask the court to rule on the Proclamation or on whether they belong to Tren de Aragua, and no court has found that they do not. The Coalition records that as squarely as the rest.
That the Committee against Torture has found anything about El Salvador as a receiving state. It has not. Its last concluding observations predate the transfers by more than two years, and it has no power to hear a complaint from an individual about El Salvador.
The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.
A release happened. All 252 men were released on 18 July 2025 and none of that cohort remains in CECOT. Ten United States nationals and eighty Venezuelan political prisoners were released in return. A return happened: one man was brought back to the United States and later ordered released from immigration custody. Monitors did get in once, in May and June 2025.
The United States courts did not find that its own government lied. The district court expressly credited the three sworn declarations saying El Salvador held legal authority, and reached its conclusion consistently with them. Its own earlier ruling of 4 June 2025 went the other way, holding that the plaintiffs had not established constructive custody. The appellate court vacated both the injunction and the contempt finding.
El Salvador’s position, in its own words, is that these were never its prisoners: that it made prison space available and that legal responsibility lay with the sending state. The Coalition disagrees with the conclusion that follows from it, and publishes it in full because a reader is entitled to the argument on the other side.
Any statement or report by the Salvadoran Ombudsman about the people transferred from the United States. The Coalition has found none.
The address for filing at the Inter-American Commission, which is the one route on this page documented as working. Every attempt to reach the Organization of American States site returned an error, and the Coalition will not print an address it has not opened. This is the most important gap on the page and it is being worked on.
Contact details for the human rights institute of the Central American University and for the state public defender service, for the same reason.
Whether a person sent to El Salvador today can reach a lawyer at all. The evidence runs one way, but it is the testimony of families rather than anything systematic.
If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.
Courts. J.G.G. v. Trump, No. 25-cv-766 (D.D.C.), memorandum opinion of 22 December 2025, and the order of 12 February 2026. Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949 (Supreme Court of the United States, 10 April 2025). Trump v. J.G.G., 604 U.S. 670 (2025), 7 April 2025. J.G.G. v. Trump, No. 25-5124 (D.C. Cir., 8 August 2025).
Reports. Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, You Have Arrived in Hell, 12 November 2025. Human Rights Watch, US and El Salvador, Deportees Forcibly Disappeared, 16 March 2026, and the El Salvador chapter of its World Report 2026. Amnesty International, on the human cost of the state of exception, 15 July 2026.
United Nations and the Inter-American system. Committee against Torture, concluding observations on El Salvador, CAT/C/SLV/CO/3, 19 December 2022, and list of issues prior to reporting, CAT/C/SLV/QPR/4, 31 December 2025. United Nations special procedures, statement of 30 April 2025. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Estado de excepción y derechos humanos en El Salvador, OEA/Ser.L/V/II Doc. 97/24, 28 June 2024, read in the copy held by Refworld because the Commission’s own site would not serve it.
Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, for the accession of 17 June 1996 and for the absence of El Salvador from both the article 21 and the article 22 lists, and chapter IV-9-b, in which El Salvador does not appear at all.
United States Senate. Letter of twelve senators to the Secretary of State, 15 May 2025.
Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. Three figures that appeared in the Coalition’s working notes were removed before publication because they could not be traced to a primary document: a death toll higher than any of those given above, a single reconciled payment figure, and a single reconciled transfer date. Corrections to the Coalition.