The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum defines a concentration camp as any facility where people are imprisoned outside of judicial process — where they are not indicted, not convicted, and not protected by the rule of law. By that standard, El Salvador’s CECOT — the so-called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — is not just a prison, but a modern-day concentration camp.
Under President Nayib Bukele’s government, tens of thousands have been swept off the streets without trial, without charges, and often without so much as a police report. Once inside, these detainees are not just held indefinitely — they are subjected to forced labor. The Bukele administration has openly boasted about using detainees for construction, maintenance, and public works, using coerced labor as part of its authoritarian crackdown under the guise of national security.
And now, under President Donald Trump, the United States is directly involved.
One case is already public: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was granted protection by a U.S. immigration judge in 2019. That judge ruled Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced likely persecution and violence. Despite that legally binding decision, the Trump administration deported him anyway. Once in El Salvador, he was immediately seized and transferred to CECOT. The U.S. Supreme Court has since ordered his return, but the Bukele government refuses — and Trump has done nothing.
Abrego Garcia is not alone. Under Trump’s revived mass deportation machine, others have been — and are still being — sent from the United States straight into a facility the world now recognizes for what it is: a concentration camp and forced labor compound.
This is a violation of international human rights law. The United States is prohibited from deporting anyone to a country where they face torture, persecution, or inhumane treatment. When it defies that obligation — especially by delivering people directly into a system of indefinite detention and forced labor — it commits a grave moral and legal crime.
The obligation is clear: every person the Trump administration illegally sent to CECOT must be returned to the United States. The government must secure their release, repatriation, and protection — not tomorrow, not next month, but immediately.
When a government knowingly delivers human beings into the hands of a concentration camp, and into forced labor, history does not look away. It judges. The United States must correct this — and the world must hold those responsible to account.
