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About CECOT

1. Designed and completed in 2023 in response to overcrowding in other El Salvador prisons.
2. Built to house up to 40,000 inmates.
3. For the “worst of the worst” gang members.
4. Its aim is to be a PERMANENT solution, no rehabilitation, no return to society. The justice minister bluntly stated that prisoners at CECOT will “never return to their communities.”
5. 8 pavilions with 256 cells.
6. Cells house 80 - 100 men, sometimes more. 100 square meters in size.
7. 19 guard towers, multiple layers of fencing, 24/7 surveillance.
8. CECOT officials refuse to disclose actual population.

Daily Regiment

1. Total lockdown. Prisoners are confined shoulder to shoulder in their cells 23.5 hours a day.
2. No outdoor time whatsoever.
3. Fluorescent lights remain on 24 hours a day. They have no sense of time and no sleep cycle.
4. They receive 30 minutes a day of tightly controlled corridor exercise.
5. No jobs, no classes, no books, no programs of any kind. Nothing.
6. CCTV watches prisoners 24 hours a day like “silent Gods.”

Communication and Isolation

1. No visits from family or lawyers.
2. No letters or phone calls.
3. All cell signal is blocked for a 1.5 mile radius.
4. Mass virtual trials via video link with up to 900 prisoners at a time.
5. Most inmates have never been formally charged or sentenced.

Discipline and Psychological Control

1. Prisoners arrive barefoot and shackled with their heads bowed.
2. Forced to kneel in tight rows with their heads shaved upon arrival.
3. If they are to be punished, they are put into an even smaller cell that is completely dark.
4. Swift violence for perceived “disobedience” or breaking of any rule.
5. No sunlight, ever. No clocks. No time markers.
6. Inmates experience “profound psychological deterioration.”
7. Juveniles, around the age of 16, are in cells with hardened gang members.
8. Inmates are required to be “alert and obedient” at all times during the day.
9. Most sit idly. They are often required to remain silent. The rest of the time they remain mostly silent out of fear.
10. Some inmates have reportedly lost their voices from prolonged silence and stress.
11. Journalists who have been allowed in reported an atmosphere of “unnatural, tense silence.”
12. The guards are armed and wearing balaclavas to increase fear.

Living Conditions

1. Each cell is designed for 80 people, but often it far surpasses 100.
2. Inmates sleep on concrete floors without mattresses or on iron bunk tiers where they must lay across the metal slats.
3. Cells are so crammed full they sleep standing up or take turns laying down.
4. No pillows or blankets.

1. Meals are minimal, rice and beans. Sometimes a tortilla. Sometimes an egg.
2. No utensils, prisoners eat with their hands.
3. Water is extremely limited. They share a jug within their cells.
4. Malnutrition is common and has been contributed to multiple deaths.

1. Each cell has 2 toilets and 2 sinks for 80+ men.
2. No privacy, ever. Constant filth and foul smells.
3. Bathing and “laundry” is done by buckets inside the cell.
4. Diseases are rampant. TB, scabies, fungal infections, stomach illnesses.
5. NO outside medical care is allowed, ever.
6. Over 350 inmates have died and most were due to medical conditions or abuse from guards.
7. If someone falls gravely ill, they are treated (if at all) in an on-site infirmary. “No prisoner ever leaves the premises alive” for medical care outside, a CECOT official told journalists, a chilling acknowledgment that even medical transfers are off the table.

Abuse and Violence

1. Much of the abuse is only recorded from President Bukeles former facility, the secrecy and lack of oversight at CECOT makes all reporting difficult. Nobody comes out, and dead bodies are viewed through photos. Human rights inspectors are denied access.
2. Beating by guards are common, especially upon first arrival. One man temporarily detained said he watched guards beat all new arrivals for an hour straight. When he tried to tell the guards he was wrongfully detained, they broke his ribs and threw him in a “dark hole” with 320 other men who also beat him.
3. Reported use of water torture and extended kneeling.
4. “Simulated drowning” has been repeatedly reported.
5. Guards often choose to humiliate. At the former CECOT facility, guards would strip inmates naked, push their faces into ice water until they nearly drowned while calling them “dogs” and “scum.”
6. Solitary confinement is used as punishment.
7. In the 350+ deaths since 2022, there were signs of asphyxiation, fractures and blunt trauma seen in photos.
8. Bodies are buried in mass graves, with no family notification.
9. Rival gangs are mixed together as punishment.
10. Government claims gang hierarchy is broken, reports suggest otherwise.
11. One of the few people ever released from CECOT said they often had to sleep and live next to the corpses of their cell mates until the guards got around to removing them.
12. Another man said they had to kneel for hours and if someone collapsed from exhaustion, they would “drag them out like an animal.” He said many of the men there were “not even gang members.”

Legal

1. Held without trial.
2. Virtually NO releases
3. Officials state openly they will never leave.
4. Many are serving decade long sentences without a trial.
5. The United States has sent 238 perceived Venezuelan gang members, 179 with no criminal records in the U.S. or abroad, under a $6,000,000 a year deal.
6. Humans rights refer to it as a “transnational penal colony” and a U.S. judge has referred to it as “wholly lawless.”
7. President Bukele has acknowledged that thousands of men in El Salvador prisons were “actually innocent”. Many of those men were released from those prisons, but prisoners in CECOT go through a one way door.

Estimonies from Inside

1. CNN and CBS report that inmates sleep on concrete or bare steel.
2. Gang members claim it “breaks them emotionally.”
3. Inmates describe it as a place of “torture and death.”
4. Witnesses report having to sleep next to dead cell mates.
5. Guards claim “brutality is necessary.”
6. Police whistleblowers have admitted innocent men have been detained and abused.
7. One guard stated “they have nothing, so they have nothing to lose.”

Human Rights and Global Response

1. Condemnation from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Inter-American Comission on Human Rights
2. CECOT violates Nelson Mandela Rules (UN Standard of Prisoner Treatment)
3. Cristosal reported 3,300 violations in the first year alone.
4. Human rights organizations refer to it as a “black hole for human rights”.

Resource List

Vanity Fair: Trump Administration Deported 238 Men to Hellish Prison in El Salvador. 75% Apparently Have No Criminal Record

AP: What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there

Al Jazeera: Photos: Inside El Salvador’s new ‘mega prison’ for gang members

NPR: What to know about CECOT, El Salvador's mega-prison for gang members

Human Rights Watch: Human Rights Watch declaration on prison conditions in El Salvador for the J.G.G. v. Trump case

El Pais: Photos: A tour of Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison

Truthout: Trump Administration Has Detained Citizens as Part of Mass Deportation Actions

Reuters: Lawyers say El Salvador blocks access to detained Venezuelans