Relatives of more than three dozen Venezuelans sent from the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador said their family members were originally told they would be deported to Venezuela but never told they would be shipped to the Central American country, Human Rights Watch reported Friday.
"The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention," said Human Rights Watch in a statement.
“These enforced disappearances are a grave violation of international human rights law,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The cruelty of the US and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families.”
Human Rights Watch said they interviewed 40 relatives of Venezuelan nationals suspected of being in the U.S. unlawfully and dispatched to the mega prison known as the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, CECOT), in El Salvador.
Human Rights Watch said Salvadoran authorities have not responded to their April 5 letter asking for information on the identity of people detained or their conditions. And that U.S. authorities have told family members they are unable to share any information on their relatives’ whereabouts.
READ MORE: Supreme Court allows Trump to deport Venezuelans under wartime law, but only after judges' review
The Trump administration last month transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling. Human Rights Watch said 238 Venezuelan nationals are being held in the Salvadoran prison.
This week, judges in Texas and New York temporarily barred the U.S. government from deporting Venezuelans jailed in parts of those two states while their lawyers challenge the Trump administration’s use of the rarely invoked law letting presidents imprison noncitizens or expel them from the country in times of war.
The pair of rulings didn't address the legality of the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang, and they only applied to immigrants in federal custody in the judges’ judicial districts.
The judicial moves were the first to occur after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled the administration can resume deportations under the act, but deportees must be afforded some due process before they are flown away, including reasonable time to argue to a judge that they should not be deported.
Civil rights lawyers in the two states had sued to prevent the government from deporting five men who deny being part of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Similar legal challenges are likely to follow in other places where Venezuelans have been detained. The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the judges in Texas and New York to decide whether the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act is lawful when the country is not at war.
The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times in the past, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when it was used to justify the mass internment of people of Japanese heritage while the U.S. was at war with Japan.
The United States is not at war with Venezuela, but Trump has argued the U.S. is being invaded by members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
U.S. immigration authorities already have deported more than 100 people and sent them to a notorious prison in El Salvador without letting them challenge their removals in court.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
