The autocrat's prison
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The Trump administration is defying a federal judge who's demanding details about a flight to El Salvador. It carried almost 200 men who the administration says are gang members and who were flown from U.S. soil after the judge said, don't.

President Trump and El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele posted video of the shackled men being pulled from a plane by guards in riot gear and transported in white buses to prison. The official White House Twitter account also reposted a remix of the video set to Semisonic's closing time. Semisonic responded, the

The song is about joy and possibilities and hope. And they have missed the point entirely. Lest we all, let's focus up. The administration hasn't offered any proof that these men are gang members and acknowledges many don't even have criminal records in the U.S. All this coming up on Today Explained. Support for this show comes from ADT.

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It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Ted Hessen. Ted is an immigration reporter at Reuters. Ted, President Trump is using the Alien Enemies Act to target a gang called Tren de Aragua. Who are they? Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan gang, a prison gang. And the name translates to train from Aragua, which is a state in Venezuela. And it's a prison gang.

And within Venezuela and within the region, they have a reputation, a notorious reputation for extortion and kidnappings and even contract killings.

We've seen them increasingly talked about in the U.S., particularly in the political context. And this goes back to the presidential election last year. And what we're hearing, of course, Martha, is that people are terrified by what has happened with some of these Venezuelan gangs. They're dealing drugs. They're getting arrested. It's not just Lake and Riley. I can give you dozens of examples of people who have been victims of crimes.

What we saw under former President Joe Biden was an increase in immigration generally and illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border.

and also hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who entered both by crossing the border illegally and through legal entry programs that Biden himself had launched. And then during the election, we noticed that as President Trump made illegal immigration a major theme, and even legal immigration a major theme of his re-election campaign, he was focusing also on the Venezuelans who had come into the country, and particularly portraying many of them as immigrants

affiliated with this gang, Tren de Aragua, or with gangs in general or criminality. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country. And they're now in the United States and told by their countries, like Venezuela, don't ever come back or we're going to kill you.

Now, that said, even though this gang does have a fearsome reputation within Venezuela and within the region, there are not yet signs that they're operational on a large scale in the U.S. There have been individual cases of alleged members of the gang arrested and charged with crimes, including very serious crimes. But that said, it's just not clear that they're operational here in the way that they might be in another country. What does the Alien Enemies Act allow the president to do about this situation?

perceived threat? So the Alien Enemies Act is an obscure, rarely used wartime statute that dates back to 1798. And it's really just been used three times in US history and always in times of war.

It's best known or most notoriously known for its use in World War II to justify internment camps for Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, and German Americans. The Trump administration has been building the case that this law could be used against a quote-unquote invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border. And in a proclamation that he issued on Saturday, President Trump said that

The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which he said was present in the U.S., was part of this invasion and essentially was conducting what he was calling irregular warfare in the U.S., enough to justify invoking this wartime statute. They invaded our country. So this isn't, in that sense, this is war. In many respects, it's more dangerous than war because, you know, in war they have uniforms. You know who you're shooting at. You know who you're going after. Now,

Part of the reason that he would like to do this is that when you have the statute in effect, you can bypass due process in these cases. So they wouldn't have to go through immigration courts. They may have a pending asylum claim. They may have even a legal status in the U.S. President Trump's proclamation exempted citizens and green card holders, but it could be applied to other Venezuelans in the U.S. ages 14 and up, so actually children as well.

Do we know that the 200 or so men who've been deported so far are all members of this gang? The Trump administration has said that these are alleged members of the gang. We still have few details about them. In a court filing that came out this week, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, said,

said that many of the people who were deported actually had no criminal records in the U.S. Some of them had been either charged or convicted of crimes, including some serious ones, but many of them had not. That said, he said that some of them had crimes

criminal convictions in other countries, including Venezuela, and still could potentially pose a threat because of the lack of information about them. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said something similar. But in the same breath, Secretary of State Rubio also said that if it turns out some of them are not gang members, well, El Salvador, where they've been sent to, can just deport them back to Venezuela. Now, assuming, let's just assume, and I'm not saying this is the case, because I think there's high fidelity and confidence that, in fact, that's exactly what every single one of them was.

But if one of them turns out not to be, then they're just illegally in our country and the Salvadorans can then deport them to Venezuela. But they weren't supposed to be in our country to begin with. They were here illegally. We're all here illegally with all the people that are on that list. OK. All right. So there are legal challenges flying back and forth. Where do things stand legally right now? Since President Trump.

implemented this policy on Saturday, there has been a legal battle going on led by the American Civil Liberties Union. And they actually sued preemptively before the policy was public to prevent the use of this act against five Venezuelan clients they had in the U.S. In that case, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., his name's James Boasberg,

He issued a temporary restraining order for 14 days that essentially said the Trump administration needs to put this policy on hold. There are serious questions being raised here as to whether it could cause irreparable harm, which is the standard for that, and that they should stop. And what we learned after the fact is that

Two flights, at least two flights, were in the air leaving the U.S. and bound for eventually for El Salvador. In his order, Judge Boasberg had said that even if there are planes in the air, you need to stop the planes and turn them around and bring the people back. And it's kind of kicked off a legal battle, first of all, about the policy and then secondarily about whether the Trump administration was honoring the spirit of his restraining order and whether they followed it. These planes continued on.

to their destination, which was El Salvador. And after the fact, the Trump administration has made the argument that they had already left the continental U.S., they were no longer in U.S. airspace, and that fundamentally by the time he issued this order, the people had been removed or deported from the U.S., so it no longer applied to them. And all this is still playing out in court, so we don't necessarily know where the judge will land on it or what the final result will be.

We're going to be talking about the prison in El Salvador where these men were sent in the second half of the show. It's really a remarkable place, a very difficult place to get out of. If some of these men are able to prove that they are not members of Trend de Aragua, will they be released? That's completely unclear to me at the moment.

Bukele has said that they'll be held there for a one-year period that could be renewed. It's not clear that they're facing any charges in El Salvador. It's not clear that they're facing any charges in the U.S. or other countries either, or that they even have criminal convictions. So they are really in a legal black hole at the moment.

At this moment, we don't know what sort of access they're going to be getting to attorneys or what might ultimately happen with them. What we have seen in the Trump administration is a kind of similar effort to send Venezuelan migrants and people from other countries as well to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, another place that's known as a legal black hole for long-term detention.

And in those cases, the people who were there were not ultimately held for long periods. In the case of the Venezuelans, they were able to be removed back to Venezuela. So there is a question, is this a way to pressure the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro there to agree to accept these deportees and maybe just open the door generally to accepting more deportees?

Ted Hessen, he's an immigration reporter for Reuters based in Washington, D.C. Ted, thanks so much for your time. Thank you for having me. Coming up about that prison, we're going to talk to a reporter who's been on the inside. Support for Today Explained comes from the new book Everything is Tuberculosis by number one bestselling author John Green. In the book, Green charts how the world's deadliest infectious disease has shaped the course of human history. Everything is Tuberculosis highlights science,

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Requires ADT-complete pro-monitoring plan and compatible devices. Copyright 2025 ADT LLC. All rights reserved. Lilia Luciano is a national correspondent at CBS News. Lilia was allowed inside of Sicot, a prison which was built to hold men who Salvadoran officials call the worst of the worst, gang members from MS-13 and Barrio 18.

I was inside last month. I wanted to get in and experience for myself what has become the biggest symbol of this tough-and-crime model that Bukele established under a state of exception where certain rights were suspended so that they could carry out these massive detentions to the point that they've detained around

around 2% or more than 2% of their population, and by doing so, reducing crime. El Salvador is the country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. And of course, that translated to a significant drop in crime. That was my interest. I wanted to see how they did it. I had been asking for over a year and a half to get access to the prison and see how it worked.

And finally, they approved the visit in February. Prisons are often viewed as very private places. Why do you think that the Salvadorian government let you in? This is a very different prison. This is probably the most famous prison in the world by now. The images that have emerged from this prison...

are the symbol that have gained Nayib Bukele an unparalleled level of popularity, not just in his country, but in the entire region. I have heard from countless different nationalities, we need a Bukele. And when people think of Bukele, they're thinking about this prison. Tell us what you saw in this prison. What's it like?

You know, when you walk into the prison, it's clear that this is the ultimate maximum security. There are multiple layers of gates. The first thing you notice when you approach the area of the prison, about a mile outside of the prison gates, is that there is a suffocation of communication. Cell phones stop working.

you're taken in buses because it's massive and you see dozens of towers with surveillance and everything you can expect from a prison. But the thing that's really striking is just how quiet everything is. The inmates are all within these modules that contain a number of cells inside. Inside each cell, there is anywhere from like 80 to 100 or even more prisoners. But it's all extremely quiet, which is

You know, when you think about 80 men, gang members inside one cell and you can't hear a thing, that's when you really come to understand the level of force and strength that the guards impose. So there's no communication. There is no visits ever.

No family visits. Those prisoners are within these modules. Imagine like a big airplane hangar.

and inside those hangers is where the cells are. They never leave the module, so they never see the light outside. There's no outside time. They can only be outside the cell in the hallway that divides all the cells for about 20 to 30 minutes per day. They don't have mattresses. They don't have sheets. They just sleep in these metal cots. It's these multiple dozens of bunk beds. And that's where they are all the time.

What's striking is that it just feels like these human beings who are in there are stripped outside of their tattoos, of course, because they can't take away the tattoos, but they're stripped of anything that makes them stand apart. It's a mass of shaved heads, all dressed the same. Their uniforms, which are all the same, all white. They're wearing Crocs or shoes that are kind of like Crocs.

And they're all staring from within the cell outside completely quietly. I asked, "Why are they so quiet? What happens if they talk?" And they said, "You'll have a time to talk to somebody, but if they speak out of line, they're going into solitary." We are not allowed to interact, to speak to any of the prisoners. They are all staring at us. It's so striking to see them.

I only spoke to one prisoner. They only made one prisoner available for me to talk to who spoke English, who said that he was from L.A. and shared a little bit of his experience. Are you going to be here the rest of your life? Yeah, the rest of my life. We murdered a lot of people and this is the consequence of what happened to us. It's like that Titanic that we were big and strong gang, but we got hit with the iceberg. And he said, you know, you have to act tough.

but you can't fight. And at night, he said, we, you know, you just kind of cry. You cry at night? Yeah.

Who are these men? Who does El Salvador say they are? And what do we know about how accurate what the government portrays of them is? El Salvador says these are people who were known, and even the human rights advocates I talked to told me, yeah, yeah, the people who are in El Secot are for sure these criminals. However, when I asked the director of the prison, he said,

about people being there without convictions, he looked at me and said, no, no, but these are really bad guys. It's almost like the notion of innocent until proven guilty does not exist in there. And so this is something that

I started to understand a lot better when I spent some time and I interviewed their defense minister and their minister of safety and security, who is the person who is in charge of implementing what's known as this Bukele model, where the defense minister was telling me, in the past, we had to wait for people to commit a crime.

Now, we arrest them first. So you don't need to show evidence. You don't need a warrant. I mean, they just take somebody on suspicion of gang affiliation. There's kind of these mass hearings where people are charged with the crimes of the gang of the organization. And then it's very hard to prove that you're not part of that organization. I also asked how many people have been released.

who proved that they were innocent. And this security and justice minister told me about 8,000 of almost 90,000 who've been detained. All right, 8,000 of about 90,000 have been released, or so you were told. Or so I was told. So there is a possibility, again, according to Salvadorian officials, there is a possibility that if you are innocent, if you were wrongly incarcerated, you can get out. Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

People get hearings. Part of the issue that somebody brought up is that so many people are incarcerated that there's no way there's enough attorneys to deal with every case. It's just very hard to really get your day in court. So even if there's hope, people spend years before they can complete their case and be released. There seems to be a huge burden there.

on people, on family members to prove somebody's innocence. And the biggest, I think, obstacle that these families who have

Family members or loved ones imprisoned who claim that they're innocent. The biggest burden I think they have is public opinion, is the overwhelming popularity of this model in El Salvador and really throughout the region. I walked the streets with the Minister of Defense and people were stopping him to take photos, to hug him, to thank him like a celebrity. It felt like I was walking around with, I don't know, some famous singer or something. And people just expressed all of this gratitude.

You know, I was looking around on YouTube and Instagram earlier today, and there are a lot of videos of Sikot, of this prison, not just from traditional media outlets like CBS News, like yours, but also from seemingly random YouTube influencers.

It's pretty amazing if you think about it, what Naive Ukulele has been able to do with this country

The streets are as safe as they've ever been because all these guys are out. Nayib Bukele is not hiding this. If anything, he's publicizing this. He invited influencers in. It's the opposite of hiding. Nayib Bukele is by profession a marketer. He's a publicist, a PR professional. Before he became president, he is absolutely a marketing genius. He knows everything.

how to get to people. And his popularity goes way beyond his own country. So he wants to be a global figure. I think he is a global figure. He has been talking to the GOP directly. He has been celebrated by leaders of the Republican Party for a long time. You know, we've seen Matt Gaetz go to El Salvador. We've seen him speak at CPAC.

Against all adversity, we transform El Salvador from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest in the Western Hemisphere. He uses every opportunity he can to both export himself as a brand, his security model as a brand, so that his security model and his prison model is sustainable. And this is something he said over and over. So we're safer than Canada, safer than Chile, safer than Uruguay, safer than the U.S., safer than any country.

in the Western Hemisphere. He offered the U.S. to take in the U.S.'s deportees, to take in the convicted U.S. criminals, and to even take in convicted U.S. citizens in exchange for what he calls a small fee that to El Salvador would signify a big amount.

You report and travel around Latin America. You talk to people who say our country is also suffering from instability. We need a bukele here. It sounds like what you're saying is we might see more attempts at building prisons like this elsewhere in Latin America. Do you envision that being possible? I think others will try to emulate it.

I also think that there is a lot more communication now with the Trump administration, a lot more recognition of what has happened in El Salvador and potentially an even bigger and expanding cooperation because the rights that have been suspended under the state of exception exist in the U.S. So it's a lot harder.

for the U.S. to implement the kinds of policies that Bukele implemented. And so it seems like outsourcing of a security system now in terms of deportees, now in terms of immigration, but we'll see where it gets.

Lilia Luciano, CBS News. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and Avishai Artsy. Amin El-Sadi edited, Laura Bullard fact-checked, and Patrick Boyd engineered. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Support for this show comes from ADT.

From ADT comes Trusted Neighbor, the new standard in home access. Through the ADT+ app, easily grant and automate event-based or scheduled access for neighbors, friends, and helpers. Notify trusted individuals of events like alarms or packages, and set access windows for planned guests or even the dog walker without interrupting your day. Visit ADT.com. When every second counts, count on ADT.

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