Immigrant rights groups sue to invalidate Trump administration’s El Salvador prison deal

A coalition of immigrant rights groups on Thursday sued to invalidate the Trump administration’s deal to house detainees in a notorious prison in El Salvador, saying the arrangement to move migrant detainees outside the reach of U.S. courts violates the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., notes that the administration has argued that those sent to El Salvador are beyond the reach of U.S. courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other U.S. constitutional guarantees.

The deal, the plaintiffs allege, “is contrary to law. And it was entered into without any legal basis.”

The administration has sent hundreds of migrants to El Salvador, including some it accuses of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

The administration in March agreed to pay $6 million for El Salvador to house 300 migrants. President Donald Trump has said he’d like to eventually send U.S. citizen criminals to the Salvadoran prison, though that’d likely be unconstitutional.

The lawsuit notes that the State Department has reported that inmates in El Salvador’s prisons may be subject to “harsh and life-threatening” conditions, torture and lack access to reliable food, water and medical care. The prisons are run by the government of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who once called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and has posted images of detainees sent from the U.S. getting marched into his centerpiece prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In one notorious case cited in the lawsuit, the Trump administration has not returned Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man it deported to El Salvador in violation of a judge’s order, saying the man is no longer in its custody.

That was the administration’s argument when another judge ordered it to halt deportations under an 18th century wartime act — that the deportees were on a plane to El Salvador and outside the legal reach of federal judges.

The suit was filed by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Immigrant Equality, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel in a separate lawsuit over the initial flights to El Salvador.

Thursday’s lawsuit says the deal violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which prevents agencies like the State Department, which reached the deal with El Salvador, from undertaking unconstitutional or otherwise illegal acts. In addition to violating the constitution, the suit notes that housing prisoners in El Salvador violates the First Step Act, a law requiring federal prisons to try to house inmates close to home. That law was signed by Trump in 2018.