The recent meeting between Donald Trump and El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele at the White House has sealed a controversial cooperation deal months in the making: the expedited deportation of migrants from the United States to the small Central American nation under emergency laws, bypassing judicial review and due process. At the centre of this agreement is the use of El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento para el Terrorismo (Cecot), a maximum-security prison internationally criticised for inhumane detention practices.

Since March, over 200 migrants — mostly Venezuelans and some Salvadorans — have been deported to the Cecot prison. Many of them were accused of links to criminal organisations such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. Yet the criteria for these accusations remain vague. As The New York Times noted, the evidence used to justify some of these expulsions included little more than tattoos or clothing styles allegedly associated with gang culture.

One case has become emblematic of the system's flaws. Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran migrant who had lived in the US since 2019, was forcibly sent to El Salvador despite a federal court ruling prohibiting his removal due to the risk of torture or violence. His deportation was later acknowledged by US officials as an “administrative error.” Nevertheless, Bukele has refused to return him, labelling Ábrego a “terrorist” and insisting he will remain imprisoned in the country. This contradicts a US Supreme Court decision and raises questions about adherence to international legal standards.

Pam Bondi, the US Attorney General, stated that the return of Ábrego is at El Salvador’s discretion, effectively sidestepping Washington's legal responsibility. This unprecedented move, which many viewed as nothing short of shameful, also reveals a calculated political alignment: Trump’s administration has long downplayed judicial intervention, while Bukele benefits from showcasing harsh security policies that have boosted his domestic approval ratings.

This deportation strategy is legally supported by the White House's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — originally intended for wartime scenarios and last used during World War II. Critics, including rights organisations such as Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch, argue this usage is legally dubious and ethically indefensible. Meanwhile, reports have described the expulsions as “forced disappearances,” with detainees kept incommunicado and denied legal representation or contact with their families.

Despite lacking criminal records in the US, the majority of the deportees are now held in the Cecot prison, a facility with capacity for 40,000 inmates and a central feature of Bukele’s trademark zero-tolerance security campaign, which has transformed El Salvador from one of the world's most dangerous countries into one of Latin America's safest. However, the prison has been repeatedly criticised for alleged torture, overcrowding, and the absence of due process. International watchdogs have warned that these practices amount to systematic human rights violations.

Bukele’s stance, bolstered by a recently signed $6mn cooperation agreement with the Trump administration — the terms of which remain largely undisclosed — suggests a transactional relationship in which legal and humanitarian norms are secondary at best. Trump, for his part, has publicly lauded Bukele’s approach, hailing it as a solution to the alleged “open borders” policies of previous Democratic administrations.

While politically expedient, this bilateral collaboration risks normalising a precedent of mass deportations without legal safeguards. It also positions El Salvador not as a partner in regional development, but as an outsourced penal colony for US immigration policy.

Furthermore, the current trajectory highlights a deeper concern: the erosion of legal accountability under the guise of national security. Both strongmen have built political capital on anti-migrant rhetoric and performative enforcement measures, often at the expense of institutional norms, with the deployment of prisons like Cecot as a tool of migration management exemplifying this trend.

The US Department of State, in an arguably contradictory move, recently reclassified El Salvador as a low-risk destination for American travellers, safer than France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. This seems at odds with the country’s ongoing state of emergency and the documented absence of rule of law.

The Department motivated this decision by stating on its website that “Gang activity has decreased over the last three years. This has caused a drop in violent crimes and murders." But conspicuously failed to mention that the "consolidation in El Salvador of a form of executive power without checks and balances is advancing rapidly," as Amnesty International warned in a recent report that found a "worrying risk of further erosion of human rights."

The broader implications are clear: if such policies continue unchecked, they may set a dangerous standard in which due process becomes optional and human rights subordinate to political theatre.