SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy — a mega-prison where visitation, recreation and education are not allowed — became the latest tool in U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration on Sunday, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were transferred there.

The arrival of the immigrants, alleged by the U.S. to be members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, took place under an agreement for which the Trump administration will pay the government of President Nayib Bukele $6 million for one year of services.

Bukele has made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. In 2023, he opened the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where the immigrants were sent over the weekend even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring their deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members.

What is the CECOT?

Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in the town of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital.

The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.

Occasionally, prisoners who have gained a level of trust from prison officials give motivational talks. Prisoners sit in rows in the corridor outside their cells for the talks or are led through exercise regimens under the supervision of guards.

Bukele’s justice minister has said that those held at CECOT would never return to their communities.

The prison’s dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards.

How many prisoners does El Salvador hold?

The government doesn’t regularly update the figure, but the human rights organization Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had 110,000 people behind bars, including those sentenced to prison and those still awaiting trial. That’s more than double the 36,000 inmates that the government reported in April 2021, a year before Bukele ramped up his fight against crime.

Cristosal and other advocates have accused authorities of human rights violations.

Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador’s prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited cases of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.

In slickly produced videos, the government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.

Why were immigrants sent to CECOT?

The migrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law requires a president to declare the U.S. is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the U.S. in invoking the wartime authority.

Aragua Train originated in an infamously lawless prison in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.

The Trump administration has not identified the migrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the U.S.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes into an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to CECOT in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and placed in cells.

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Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

Republican leaders understand that the GOP has earned a reputation for championing the interests of the wealthy, but they occasionally make the case that the party has changed.

Around this time four years ago, for example, then-House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy declared“The uniqueness of this party today is we’re the workers party.” Around the same time, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote online“The Republican Party is not the party of the country clubs, it’s the party of hardworking, blue-collar men and women.”

It’s difficult to say with confidence whether GOP leaders ever believed their own rhetoric when it came to workers’ interests, but Donald Trump continues to take steps that leave little doubt that the contemporary Republican Party is most certainly not “the workers party.” Bloomberg Law reported:

In case anyone needs a refresher, it was in early 2014 when Barack Obama raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. As we discussed at the timebecause government contracts can be lucrative, and so many private enterprises want federal work, the Democratic president, with a stroke of a pen, gave a raise to a whole lot of employees. The shift also sent a message to the private sector that to compete in the labor force, businesses should follow suit.

Republicans were less than pleased but faced a messaging challenge: Since most Americans support a higher minimum wage, the GOP didn’t want to be seen attacking the Democrat for doing something popular. As an alternative, Republicans pretended to be outraged that Obama advanced one of his goals by way of an executive order.

Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, for example, called Obama a “Socialistic dictator” and the “Kommandant-In-Chef.” (I assume he meant “chief.”) Then-House Speaker John Boehner suggested the minimum-wage hike for contractors was unconstitutional. Ted Cruz was so incensed that he wrote and on-ed condemning the “imperial presidency of Barack Obama.”

Undeterred, Biden built on the policy in 2021, raising the wage for federal contractors to $15, amid a series of related efforts to use White House power to encourage corporations that do business with the government to adopt pro-labor policies.

Trump has now used his power to undo all of these Biden-era steps.

The president’s move comes four months after he appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the “Press” and faced a question about the federal minimum wage. Host Kristen Welker reminded the Republican that the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for more than 15 years and asked whether he was prepared to raise it.

“It’s a very low number,” Trump concededreferring to the status quo. “I will agree, it’s a very low number.”

As the exchange continued, however, Trump, who has spent years offering confusing and contradictory positions on the issue, declared that he believes having a federal minimum wage doesn’t “work.”

Evidently, he apparently believes raising the minimum wage for federal contractors doesn’t work, either.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The latest national NBC News poll asked American voters which country has their sympathies in the Russian/Ukrainian war, and the results weren’t close: Only 2% of Americans sided with Vladmir Putin’s regime, while 61% chose U.S. allies Kyiv. The same poll, however, asked about Donald Trump’s sympathies, and a 49% plurality said they believe the Republican president is sympathetic to Moscow.

Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the survey along with a GOP colleague, said, “I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters’ views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other.”

There is no reason to see the poll as an outlier. The latest national survey from Quinnipiac University found that a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war and believe he hasn’t been tough enough on Putin. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that more than half of Americans agreed that the president is “too closely aligned” with Russia. Similarly, the latest CNN poll found that a majority of Americans disapprove of the Republican’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine, and 50% said his approach to the war is bad for the United States. (For more information on the polls’ methodologies and margins of error, click on any of the above links.)

With data like this, it’s tempting to think the American president, who’s been a little too eager of late to align his administration with Moscowmight consider a change in direction. He’s not. On the contrary, Trump continues to double and triple down on his unpopular approach.

During his unhinged remarks at the Justice Department late last week, for example, the president falsely suggested that Ukraine tried to “pick on” Russia. The next day, for reasons that weren’t altogether clear, Trump published a 150-word item to his social media platform, insisting that Putin was punctual for his meeting with “my Highly Respected Ambassador and Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff” — who is not actually an ambassador.

Around the same time, NBC News published this striking report:

During the presidential transition process, Trump announced that the retired general would oversee the administration’s policy toward the war, but the NBC News report, published late last week, said Moscow made it clear behind the scenes that it did not approve of Kellogg.

The next day, Trump announced that Kellogg would now have a new jobserving as his special envoy to Ukraine. It led reporter Laura Rozen to note that it “looks like Trump let Russia veto one of his negotiators.”

In case that weren’t quite enough, as this week got underway, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration has informed our longtime European allies that the United States is withdrawing from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine — a “multinational group created to investigate leaders responsible for the invasion of Ukraine.”

The Trump administration “is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared two weeks ago. “This largely aligns with our vision.”

The latest polling suggests this is not what the American mainstream wants. The American president doesn’t seem to care.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”