Lawyers Say New Evidence Challenges Trump on El Salvador Prisons

Lawyers for Venezuelans sent to a prison in El Salvador claim new evidence “contradicts” the US government’s claims that Salvadoran officials, not the Trump administration, have legal authority over the men.

Attorneys on Monday filed a copy of statements that El Salvador submitted to a United Nations human rights office in April, stating that “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility” for detainees “lie exclusively” with the United States under agreements between the two countries. 

The US government, however, has repeatedly insisted that it had no control over the Venezuelan prisoners once they were turned over to El Salvador. That position was backed by a federal judge in Washington, who ruled in June that the detainees were no longer in the “constructive custody” of the US. 

“The documents filed with the court today show that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, one of the groups representing the Venezuelans, said in a statement.

The case is one of the highest-profile challenges to the Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration. The Venezuelan men, who the US claims are gang members, were sent to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a facility denounced by human rights groups.

A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment, nor did public information officers for the office of El Salvador’s president and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

US District Judge James Boasberg relied on a May declaration from a senior State Department official stating 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.” 

Lawyers for the Venezuelans argue the new evidence from the UN undermines that statement. The April documents were part of a probe into claims that El Salvador was responsible for the disappearance of people sent to its prisons from the United States. El Salvador denied wrongdoing.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the latest filing will affect the case. The Venezuelans’ lawyers suggested they could ask the judge’s permission to gather more information from the government. The case is before a federal appeals court on the government’s challenge to another part of Boasberg’s June order requiring that the Venezuelans in El Salvador be given an opportunity to contest their removal. 

The case is J.G.G. v. Trump, 25-cv-766.

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