El Salvador has detained some people it received after the U.S. deported them, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday, and the group described cases in which detainees were moved into the prison system without meaningful contact to families and without access to legal help. The report links the situation to the detention surge in El Salvador since President Nayib Bukele declared a “state of emergency” in March 2022, a measure Human Rights Watch says has suspended key constitutional rights.
Human Rights Watch interviewed relatives and lawyers of Salvadorans who were deported from the United States between March and October 2025 and were immediately detained in El Salvador, the report said. It said it did not specify an exact number of people subject to arbitrary detention, but focused on the experience of those it interviewed, describing families unable to confirm where detainees are held.
The report said the Salvadorans featured in its findings were among more than 9,000 Salvadorans deported from the U.S. since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second administration in January 2025. Some detainees, Human Rights Watch said, were deported alongside Venezuelans and sent to El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement, known as CECOT.
Human Rights Watch said the detainees cannot communicate with their families or talk to lawyers. Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said, “They have a right to due process, to be taken before a judge, and their relatives are entitled to know where they are being held and why. Deportation cannot mean enforced disappearance.” The report also said El Salvador’s Presidential Office did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
Human Rights Watch said it found no information from Salvadoran authorities suggesting that any of the detainees it highlighted were brought before a judge. It said that in five cases, relatives had learned the deportees’ whereabouts through litigation at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, while in other cases families and lawyers said they did not know where detainees were held or why they were detained.
El Salvador’s emergency posture has been in place for nearly four years, Human Rights Watch said, with the once-temporary measure extended since Bukele declared it in March 2022 to suppress gangs. Human Rights Watch said the emergency suspends key constitutional rights and has contributed to tens of thousands of detentions, describing a system in which detainees are often held on scant evidence and vague accusations and in which lawyers can lose track of clients amid mass proceedings.
The report also included accounts from family members of people deported in 2025 who said they learned of the detention only after images were posted online. One mother in Maryland, who asked not to be identified and said her son was deported on March 15, 2025, told Human Rights Watch she last spoke with her 29-year-old son when he called about three days before deportation and that she discovered he was in El Salvador six months later after seeing a photo Bukele posted showing detainees at CECOT. Another mother in Texas said she learned her 22-year-old son had been deported to El Salvador after seeing him in a photograph posted online, and she said she has called authorities repeatedly in both countries without receiving information.
Human Rights Watch said it reviewed the administration’s claims about gang ties and that the Trump administration has said several of the Salvadorans deported are members of the MS-13 gang. The report said that only 10.5% of the 9,000 Salvadorans deported had a conviction for a violent or potentially violent crime in the U.S.
The AP report also noted one case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported on March 15, 2025 to El Salvador and later returned to the U.S. following a judge’s order, according to Human Rights Watch. ___ Associated Press reporter Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.