Noem to tour notorious El Salvador prison
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday will tour El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where hundreds of alleged criminal illegal aliens are being held after the Trump administration deported them earlier this month.
Noem will tour the prison with the Salvadoran Minister of Justice, Héctor Gustavo Villatoro, before meeting with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, according to a Homeland Security statement. Noem’s visit is part of a three-day trip that will also see her travel to Colombia and Mexico.
Bukele opened the prison in 2023 as El Salvador wages a crackdown on powerful street gangs causing mayhem in the country. The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. As many as 65 to 70 prisoners are packed into each cell.
Prisoners are never allowed outside and can't have visitors. There are no workshops or educational programs.
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A senior Trump administration official confirmed to Fox News this month that a total of 261 illegal aliens were deported to El Salvador on March 15. The majority of them were deported via the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows for the expulsion of an enemy nation's natives and citizens without a hearing.
More than 100 of the migrants were Venezuelans removed via Title 8, while 21 others were Salvadoran MS-13 gang members, the official added. Two were MS-13 ringleaders and "special cases" for El Salvador.
Video released by El Salvador’s government after the deportees' arrival showed men, shackled at their hands and ankles, exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by heavily armed officers in riot gear.
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The men were later shown at the prison kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.
El Salvador has been operating under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights for nearly three years as Bukele deals with the street gangs. Some 84,000 people have been arrested so far, accused of gang ties and jailed, often without due process.
Bukele offered to hold U.S. deportees in the prison when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited in February.
In a March 16 post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump wrote that the U.S. "will not forget" Bukele's partnership, and thanked the leader for his "understanding of this horrible situation, which was allowed to happen to the United States because of incompetent Democrat leadership."
Fox News Digital’s Adrea Margolis and Emma Colton, along with The Associated Press, contributed to this report.