Washington, DC — In response to the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, increasingly aligning with the Trump administration and several disturbing developments over the past week, Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, issued the following statement:
“Today’s White House meeting between Trump and Bukele should alarm everyone. Trump is taking monumental yet calculated steps to expand the scope of who can be subjected to arrest, incarceration, and deportation, and normalize the abduction and removal of people to another country without due process. The Trump and Bukele partnership to outsource incarceration to El Salvador is setting a dangerous precedent of total disdain for basic human rights - not only for migrants, but for everyone in the United States, including residents and citizens, and especially Black and brown people who are disproportionately targeted by the US’s unjust criminal legal system. This moment demands widespread condemnation - from elected leaders, from the media, and from every one of us. Indefinitely imprisoning people shipped from the US to CECOT, an abusive mega prison with no due process, is not and will never be ok, for anyone. The use and escalation of offshore penal colonies – from Guantánamo to El Salvador – is a stain on the United States, and a clear tool of propaganda to dehumanize and villainize people while carrying out Trump’s cruel mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked. Bottomline, Trump and Bukele's partnership deepens collaboration with authoritarian leaders, further jeopardizing democratic values in the U.S. and around the world.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.