The autocrat's prison

Speaker 1 The Trump administration is defying a federal judge who's demanding details about a flight to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 President Trump and El Salvador's president Naeb Bukele posted video of the shackled men being pulled from the plane by guards in riot gear and transported in white buses to prison.

Speaker 1 The official White House Twitter account also reposted a remix of the video set to Semisonic's closing time.

Speaker 2 You don't have to go home, but you can't stay

Speaker 4 here.

Speaker 1 Semisonic responded, the song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely. Lest we all, let's focus up.

Speaker 1 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.

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Speaker 1 It's Today Explained. I'm Noel 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 Trende Aragua.
Who are they?

Speaker 4 Trende Aragua is a Venezuelan gang, a prison gang, and the name translates to train from Aragua, which is a state in Venezuela.

Speaker 4 And within Venezuela and within the region, they have a reputation, a notorious reputation, for extortion and kidnappings and even contract killings.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 8 And what we're hearing, of course, Martha, is that people are terrified by what has happened with some of these Venezuelan gangs.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 4 What we saw under former President Joe Biden was an increase in immigration generally and illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and also hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who entered both by crossing the border illegally and through illegal entry programs that Biden himself had launched.

Speaker 4 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 affiliated with this gang, Trende Aragua, or with gangs in general or criminality.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There have been individual cases of alleged members of the gang arrested and charged with crimes, including very serious crimes.

Speaker 4 But that said, it's just not clear that they're operational here in the way that they might be in another country.

Speaker 1 What does the Alien Enemies Act allow the president to do about this perceived threat?

Speaker 4 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 U.S. history and always in times of war.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 The Trump Trump administration has been building the case that this law could be used against a quote-unquote invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speaker 4 And in a proclamation that he issued on Saturday, President Trump said that the Venezuelan gang Prende Aragua, which he said was present in the U.S.,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 11 They've invaded our country. So this isn't, in that sense, this is war.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 4 Now, part of the reason that he would like to do this is that when you have this statute in effect, you can bypass. due process in these cases.
So

Speaker 4 they wouldn't have to go through immigration courts. They may have a pending asylum claim.
They may have even illegal status in the U.S.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 Do we know that the 200 or so men who've been deported so far are all members of this gang?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, said that many of the people who were deported actually had no criminal records in the U.S.

Speaker 4 Some of them had been either charged or convicted of crimes, including some serious ones, but many of them had not.

Speaker 4 That said, he said that some of them had criminal convictions in other countries, including Venezuela, and still could potentially pose a threat because of the lack of information about them.

Speaker 4 Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said something similar.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 But if one of them turns out not to be, then they're just illegally in our country and the Salvadorans can

Speaker 12 then deport them from to Venezuela. But they weren't supposed to be in our country to begin with.
They were here illegally. They were all here illegally, all the people that

Speaker 12 are on that list.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
So there are legal challenges flying back and forth. Where do things stand legally right now?

Speaker 4 Since President Trump implemented this policy on Saturday, there has been a legal battle going on led by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 In his order, Judge Boesberg 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 These planes continued on. to their destination, which was El Salvador.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If some of these men are able to prove that they are not members of Trende Aragua, will they be released?

Speaker 4 That's completely unclear to me at the moment.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 In the case of the Venezuelans, they were able to be removed back to Venezuela.

Speaker 4 So, there is a question: is this a way to pressure the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro there to agree to accept these deportees and maybe just open the door generally to accepting more deportees?

Speaker 1 Ted Hessen, he's an immigration reporter for Reuters based in Washington, D.C. Ted, thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 4 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 Coming up about that prison, we're going to talk to a reporter who's been on the inside.

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Speaker 15 Estades cuchando a hoy explicado. Today explained.

Speaker 15 I was inside last month.

Speaker 15 I wanted to get in and experience for myself what has become the biggest symbol of this toughened 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 2% or more than 2% of their population and by doing so, reducing crime.

Speaker 15 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 was my interest.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 1 Prisons are often viewed as very private places. Why do you think that the Salvadorian government lets you in?

Speaker 15 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 symbols that have gained Nayibu

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And when people think of Bukele, they're thinking about this prison.

Speaker 1 Tell us what you saw in this prison. What's it like?

Speaker 15 You know, when you walk into the prison, it's clear that this is the ultimate maximum security. There are multiple layers of gates.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 But the thing that's really striking is just how quiet everything is.

Speaker 15 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,

Speaker 15 you know, when you think about 80 men,

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 There is no visits ever, no family visits. Those prisoners are within these modules.
Imagine like a big airplane hangar. And inside those hangars is where the cells are.

Speaker 15 They never leave the module, so they never see the light outside. There's no outside time.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 It's these multiple dozens of bunk beds. And that's where they are all the time.

Speaker 15 What's striking is that it just

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 from within the cell outside completely quietly. I asked, why are they so quiet? What happens if they talk?

Speaker 15 And they said, you'll have a time to talk to somebody, but if they speak out of line, they're going into solitary.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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 LA and shared a little bit of his experience.

Speaker 15 Are you going to be here the rest of your life?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who are these men? Who does El Salvador say they are? And

Speaker 1 what do we know about how accurate what the government portrays of them is?

Speaker 15 El Salvador says these are people who were known who, and even the human rights advocates I talked to told me, yeah, yeah, the people who are in El Secote are for sure these criminals.

Speaker 15 However, when I asked the director of the prison

Speaker 15 about

Speaker 15 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, you know, innocent until proven guilty does not exist in there.

Speaker 15 And so this is something that I started to understand 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.

Speaker 15 Now

Speaker 15 we arrest them first.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 There's kind of these mass hearings where people are charged with the crimes of the gang, of the organization.

Speaker 15 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

Speaker 15 security and justice minister told me about 8,000

Speaker 15 of almost 90,000 who've been detained.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 15 people get hearings um

Speaker 15 there it 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.

Speaker 15 It's just very hard to really get your day in court. So even if there's hope, people spend years before they can plead their case and be released.

Speaker 15 There seems to be a huge burden on people, on family members, to prove somebody's innocence.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 1 You know, I was looking around on YouTube and Instagram earlier today, and there are a lot of videos of Seacott, of this prison, not just from traditional media outlets like CBS News, like yours, but also from seemingly random YouTube influencers.

Speaker 17 What you see behind me is the world's strictest and largest prison.

Speaker 18 And if seeing all these images, it is easy to suddenly be moved, to touch your heart, to say, wow, what harsh mistreatment inside the prison, but when you learn of the inhumane atrocities they have committed, it makes sense.

Speaker 14 It's pretty amazing if you think about it, what Naibukele has been able to do with this country. The streets are as safe as they've ever been because all these guys are out.

Speaker 1 Naibukele is not hiding this. If anything, he is publicizing this.
He invited influencers in.

Speaker 15 It's the opposite of hiding. Naibukele is by profession a marketer.
He's a publicist, a PR professional before he became president. He is absolutely a marketing genius.

Speaker 15 He knows 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.

Speaker 15 He has been celebrated by leaders of the Republican Party for a long time. You know, we've seen Matt Gates go to El Salvador.
We've seen him speak at CPAC.

Speaker 19 Against all adversity, we transform El Salvador from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest in the Western Hemisphere.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And this is something he said over and over.

Speaker 19 So we're safer than Canada, safer than Chile, safer than the Uruguay, safer than the U.S., safer than any country in the Western Hemisphere.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 citizens in exchange for what he calls a small fee that to El Salvador would signify a big amount.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 15 I think others will try to emulate it.

Speaker 15 I also think that there's 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

Speaker 15 the rights that have been suspended under the state of exception

Speaker 15 exist in the U.S. So it's a lot harder.
for the U.S. to implement the kinds of policies that Bukele implemented.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 1 Lilia Luciano, CBS News. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and Avishai Artsy.
Amina Elsadi edited, Laura Bullard, fact-checked, and Patrick Boyd Engineered. I'm Noel King.

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