This past spring Trump shocked the world by suspending due process and sending over 200 Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador named the Center of Terrorism Confinement (CECOT). Why would Trump go to such lengths to suspend habeas corpus and deport Venezuelans to a foreign gulag? Even now, he is exploring the possibility of sending more migrants to South Sudan. To fully grasp the implications of these actions, we need a broader perspective—one that a Marxist analysis could offer. A Marxist lens helps illuminate the advantages Trump gains by deporting people to such places and shows how these actions ultimately serve the interests of the ruling class.
The situation couldn’t be more dire. Once Trump begins to erode habeas corpus, he sends a message that the very fabric of our way of life is disposable—that core values like freedom and the basic right to due process when accused of a crime are now under threat. The plight of the Venezuelans reveals how deeply these grievances can unfold in real lives.
It was in the wee hours of March 15[1] when Donald Trump sent 238 Venezuelan migrants as well as 23 Salvadorans to EL Salvador’s CECOT, despite U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg’s order that the Trump administration halt deportation flights and return the planes—creating a face-off between the executive and judicial branch that is still playing out. Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to turn around deportation flights carrying Venezuelan migrants because the administration was deporting individuals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without affording them due process. Boasberg found that the government’s actions violated constitutional protections, as many of the deported individuals had not been given an opportunity to challenge the allegations against them before being sent to El Salvador.
To deport migrants Trump evoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 alleging ties to the Tren De Aragua gang. In May 2025, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stated that the administration was “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus to expedite deportations, citing the constitutional provision allowing suspension “in cases of rebellion or invasion.” The purpose of the Alien Enemies Act is to authorize the U.S. government to detain, relocate, or deport citizens of a foreign nation with which the U.S. is at war, if those individuals are deemed dangerous to public safety. It’s only been used four times: The War of 1812 (to oust the British), the Civil War (to suppress the Confederates), WWI (to oust Germans and Austrian-Hungarian nationals), and WWII (to create internment camps for the Japanese, German and Italian nationals). The US is not at war with Venezuela, which the Supreme Court ostensibly acknowledged[2] in refusing to let Trump use the Act to deport any more Venezuelan migrants. This situation underscores the tension between the executive branch’s immigration enforcement policies and the judiciary’s role in upholding constitutional rights.
These interventions indicate the Court’s recognition of the importance of due process in immigration enforcement, even as it has allowed the administration to proceed with other aspects of its immigration policy—such as allowing Trump to suspend Biden’s Humanitarian Parole Program and allowing the suspension of Temporary Protective Status for some groups. This has opened the door for a million Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Haitians to be deported if Trump figures a way around the Supreme Court’s requirement of habeas corpus for detained migrants before being deported. He may find a way to strip a million immigrants of their rights to habeas corpus in one fell swoop [note: Ukrainianian migrants are not included.]
All of Trump’s aggressive anti-immigrant tactics are aimed at Black and brown people and are happening with the backdrop of him giving refuge to a small group of white South Africans who have bogus claims of asylum. In South Africa, Black Africans make up 80% of the population but only possess 4% of the land, while whites only make up 10% of the population but possess 72% of the land. These deep inequities stem from the legacies of colonialism and Apartheid. Trump’s move is a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of people of color facing detention and deportation.
They detained the Venezuelans on scant evidence because what mattered were numbers to satisfy a quota and not human beings. They merely looked at their tattoos. One man was a gay make-up artist, Andry Hernandez Romero, with a crown tattoo that ICE labeled a gang sign—but was in fact a tribute to the three kings celebration in his hometown in Venezuela. He had no criminal record, a strong asylum case because he feared for his safety if returned to Venezuela and was awaiting the asylum decision. He was seeing crying out for his mother on tv while having his head shaved, and a guard was seen slapping his face. He may never get out. Another detainee had a crown on a soccer ball indicating his love of the game—he too has been “disappeared.” Experts say tattoos are not a reliable indicator that one is part of this gang.
The Guardian has reported that 50 of the detainees of 90 known crossings entered the US legally, which goes against Trump’s claim that they were all undocumented. Abrego Garcia had a court order to remain in the US but was deported anyway to CECOT. After mounting pressure, they moved him to a non-gang facility. They came legally to the United States, “with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,” the Cato Institute said in its report finding that 22% had non-violent criminal record, a dozen had murder and rape, and a whopping 75% had no criminal records.
Judge Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals said that “Nazis got better treatment” under the Alien Enemies Act than the Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration. She made this comment during a hearing regarding the Trump administration’s use of the 18th-century law to deport Venezuelans suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Being at CECOT is basically like being buried alive. They live in spartan conditions. Prisoners have no visits or telephone calls with families or attorneys. No books, or paper, no letters. There are no educational opportunities or rehabilitative programs available.
Each of the 256 cells is accommodating some 80 incarcerated individuals. This results in extremely limited personal space—approximately 0.6 square meters (1 square foot) per prisoner—conditions that have been likened to those of livestock pens. Prisoners are kept in their cell for 23.5 hours a day.
Aside from crowded conditions, prisoners sit and sleep on tiered metal bunks without blankets, pillows, or mattresses. They are given one small sheet. Each cell contains an open toilet, a wash basin, a plastic bucket for bathing, and a large plastic bottle for drinking water. The lights always remain on—unless the individual is being punished and is in solitary confinement, where they are shuttered in darkness for as long as two weeks. This will break just about anyone.
These individuals receive hearings via video conferencing, often in large groups of one hundred or more.
Human Rights Watch has reported numerous abuses at CECOT prison, including physical beatings, torture, and the deliberate denial of basic necessities such as food, water, and medical care. These findings reveal severe overcrowding and deplorable living conditions that fall far short of international human rights standards. As a result, there has been significant criticism and growing calls for reform from the global community.
It’s a mega prison meant to invoke fear and trembling—with no means of communicating with their families or attorneys, their lives are at the mercy of President Nayib Bukele, who could keep them locked up indefinitely. Thus far no one has left since its opening in 2023.
Prison conditions in El Salvador must be understood within the context of the country’s three-year-long state of emergency, during which constitutional due process rights, including habeas corpus, have been suspended. Although Bukele continues to enjoy strong popular support, his consolidation of power, suppression of dissent, and break down of democratic institutions have led many to characterize his leadership as authoritarian. CECOT remains a central pillar of his crime and security strategy, reflecting both his domestic agenda and his willingness to engage internationally on incarceration policies.
Described by the Associated Press as “The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy,” Bukele has used his prisons as the trademark of his fight against crime and gang violence which is none other than a war against poor people who live in the neighborhoods where much of the gang violence occurs—a story the mainstream media rarely tells.
CECOT opened in 2023, at a cost of 100 million and with a capacity of 40,000. Reports indicate that it currently holds between 15,000 and 20,000 prisoners. By 2021, Bukele had incarcerated 36,000 individuals nation-wide; today there are more than 110,000 individuals incarcerated in El Salvadorean prisons. It was his suspension of habeas corpus that allowed him to sweep so many into prison, including many innocent people.
Of course, the US incarcerates nearly 2 million people and has and has had its own notorious prisons—San Quentin with its once infamous death row and Alcatraz, both in San Francisco, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Tamms in Illinois where men were driven so insane in solitary that they shoved razor blades up their urethras to get out of their one man cells. According to Solitary Watch more than 120,000 people in US prisons are in solitary on any given day—a condition known to have far reaching mental health consequences. Prisoners routinely face physical abuse by guards and neglect from deteriorating prison conditions and lack of adequate medical care. Just this past March, six New York prison guards were charged in connection with the fatal beating of a 22-year-old inmate while he remained handcuffed— including two charged with murder. It’s the second time a group of correctional officers in the state was indicted for a death behind bars this year. Lack of decent food, water, and medical care, overcrowded conditions and abuse by guards is rampant throughout US prisons.
But sending people to notorious prisons abroad invokes a special kind of fear perceived even more fearsome than America’s gulag. According to a New York Times article dated April 30, 2025, on the motivations behind the deportations, “El Salvador’s prison, gave Mr. Trump a fearsome symbol to underscore his determination to execute mass deportations, as well as a facility outside of the reach of American lawyers and the accountability of the U.S. legal system.”
This prison is not a rehabilitative institution; rather, it stands as a symbol of state power exerted over the bodies of those caught in its carceral grip—individuals deemed superfluous or a threat to capital.
From a Marxist perspective CECOT is a behemoth of state power used by the ruling class to protect ruling class interests. Migrants, often fleeing persecution or poverty caused or exasperated by global capitalism, are considered surplus labor. Rather than being integrated into the U.S. economy or granted basic rights, they are criminalized and cast as a threat to national security and economic stability. Stripping then of their right to habeas corpus leaves them vulnerable to all kinds of abuses by the state including imprisonment and deportation to notorious prisons in countries not of their origin.
Places like Cecot serve several ideological and material goals:
- It preserves class hierarchies between “good” workers and “bad” workers, typically migrants, undocumented workers, and the unemployed—which undermines class solidarity.
- It represents the use of state violence as a disciplinary tool. Harsh treatment of migrants serves as a deterrent and spectacle. A warning to others not to challenge state power.
- It also allows Trump to avoid accountability. Far from the watchful eye of the US courts, Trump can bypass constitutional and civil rights.
- It’s also a form of carceral expansion. Capitalist can expand markets in security technology and private contractors.
- It’s a diversionary tactic, focusing workers’ attention on the migrants rather than their own exploitation. It’s a scapegoating tool.
From a Marxist lens, sending migrants to CECOT and other notorious prisons is not about justice or security but about disciplining the poor, reinforcing class boundaries, and upholding the capitalist state’s authority—even if that means violating human rights. It’s a kind of government violence that’s made to look patriotic and is excused by stirring up fake fears. In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he wrote of the state’s capacity to manufacture fear when he discusses how dominant elites maintain control through repression and ideological manipulation. Similarly, Noam Chomsky’s writings on state violence and propaganda explore how governments may use nationalist rhetoric to legitimize oppressive actions.
Currently all eyes are on the Supreme Court that is weighing in on a request by Trump to expand his repressive apparatus by deporting migrants to the South Sudan: South Sudanese prisons are severely overcrowded, often lacking adequate resources, and are subject to reports of human rights abuses. Conditions are generally harsh, with limited access to food, water, and medical care. Overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure lead to poor sanitation, difficulty sleeping, and a lack of separation between different groups of prisoners, including children and adults.
Whichever way the court decides, there will be new challenges brought before it by the Trump administration. It will take more than a court decision to dampen Trump’s enthusiasm for deporting migrants to countries not of their origin. In March 2025, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited CECOT. Standing in front of a cell of prisoners, Noem recorded a message stating: “Do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed, and you will be prosecuted. Know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.” Here, she pits undocumented workers against documented ones—criminalizing the former while casting the latter as patriots.
Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern over the suspension of habeas corpus and use of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) by the Trump administration, particularly regarding the deportation and detention of individuals like Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They have criticized these actions as violations of due process and constitutional rights.
In April 2025, a delegation of four House Democrats—Reps. Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), Maxine Dexter (Oregon), Maxwell Frost (Florida), and Robert Garcia (California)—traveled to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release. Despite their efforts, they were denied access to him.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also intervened, meeting with Abrego Garcia and criticizing both the U.S. and Salvadoran governments for their roles in his detention. He highlighted the lack of compliance with a Supreme Court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, accusing the administrations of complicity in his illegal detention.
Furthermore, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas called for accountability, referring to the facilities like CECOT as “gulags” and “torture prisons,” and urging for the release of detainees held under such conditions.
Rep. Ansari emphasized the broader implications of the case, stating: “This is not only about Abrego Garcia himself, but about the future of our democracy and due process.”
Additionally, Rep. Robert Garcia condemned the administration’s actions, asserting:
“Kidnapping immigrants and deporting them without due process is not how we do things in America.”
Well, it actually is how we do and have done things in America. The history of America is one of slavery, genocide and on-going systemic racism and inequality. Although the 14th and 15th amendments guarantee the right of due process to all “persons” including non-citizens, policies from the Clinton administration through to Trump’s have acted to erode due process rights to speed up deportations.
These statements reflect the Democratic Party’s attempt to project a commitment to due process and human rights by criticizing the use of foreign detention centers like CECOT. However, their focus on a single individual overlooks the broader crisis facing the hundreds—soon to be thousands—of others being deported under the same policy. While Abrego’s case has drawn attention to human rights abuses, there is little mention of the 237 men who were transported alongside him.
For the most part, core members of the Democratic Party are still reeling from Trump’s rise and are focused on figuring out how to appeal to voters ahead of the midterm elections. While they may talk a good game on civil liberties and justice reform, their interests are aligned with the ruling class. After all, it was under Democratic leadership—specifically President Bill Clinton—that the foundations of mass incarceration were significantly expanded. His 1994 Crime Bill was the largest in U.S. history, and his 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act severely curtailed habeas corpus rights for incarcerated people. And let’s not forget that President Obama deported more people than either Trump in his first term or Biden.
If help is going to come for the migrants trapped at CECOT it isn’t coming from the ruling class that benefits from the image of state terror but from the people struggling from below. There have been protests related to El Salvador’s CECOT. These protests focus on the human rights violations and conditions within CECOT, as well as concerns about individuals, particularly Venezuelans, being deported there. Protests have occurred in places like Tampa, Florida, and Venezuela, with families and advocates demanding the release of those incarcerated.
Here’s a more detailed look:
- Protests in Tampa: Family members of Venezuelan men deported to CECOT gathered in Tampa, Florida, and marched to the ICE building to protest their deportation.
- Protests in Venezuela: Gertrudis Pineda and her family, along with other Venezuelans, have been participating in demonstrations in Venezuela, demanding the release of individuals deported to CECOT.
- Concerns about Human Rights Violations: Advocacy groups like Cristosal, along with others, have accused authorities of human rights violations at CECOT, including cases of abuse, torture, and lack of medical attention.
- Organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights and Movement Law Lab have sent letters to international bodies, urging them to take action regarding the U.S./El Salvador agreement to transfer individuals to CECOT, citing it as a violation of international human rights.
In the meantime, these men will continue to live under the brutal repressive state apparatus that is CECOT. As an attorney interviewed on a CNN special on CECOT said there is a “real danger they will remain there.” When pressed by the reporter who asked, “you mean knowingly innocent men may never get out.” He replied, “that’s what I’m saying.”
We can’t accept that as the end of the story. Those men deserve far better. We must keep fighting to bring them home. Giving up is not an option.
CECOT is just the tip of the iceberg. What’s at stake in the suspension of habeas corpus for one segment of society is nothing less than a threat to the civil liberties of all. When constitutional protections are stripped from any group, it sets a dangerous precedent that can be extended to others. Trump has already floated the idea of sending American prisoners to facilities like CECOT—an international symbol of punitive excess. His characterization of pro-Palestinian groups as “terrorists” further opens the door to the removal of due process for tens of thousands, potentially even hundreds of thousands, of Americans. The implications are profound: the criminalization of dissent and the normalization of authoritarian tactics.
What’s urgently needed are large-scale, sustained protests that keep public attention focused on the dehumanizing realities of the suspension of habeas corpus and the forcing of people into these notorious prisons—CECOT among them—and, more broadly, on the entire carceral system. CECOT forces us to confront a fundamental question: Why are we incarcerating people in the first place? Instead of investing in institutions of punishment, why not channel those resources into addressing the root causes of gang violence—poverty, systemic inequality, the erosion of community infrastructure, and the absence of meaningful employment opportunities? The ultimate goal must be the abolition of prisons in all their brutal and dehumanizing forms.
Footnotes
[1] A foreboding coincidence? March 15 is the Ides of March when Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by the senators in Rome in 44 BCE.
[2] In May 2025, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision temporarily blocking the Trump administration from deporting certain migrants without due process.
Joan Parkin
Joan Parkin is a lifelong committed socialist and the Director of the Vanguard Incarcerated Press. She is the author of Perspectives from the Cell House: An Anthology of Prisoner Writings, and co-founder and former director of Feather River College’s Incarcerated Student Program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Boston University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).
Earlier in her career, Parkin served as the Chicago coordinator for the Death Row Ten—a group of wrongfully convicted prisoners who were tortured by former police commander Jon Burge and sentenced to death. Many of these men were later pardoned by Governor George Ryan, following a successful abolition campaign that culminated in historic death row commutations. Today, she continues her advocacy and education work by teaching incarcerated students through Boston University.
