Lawsuit against the Department of Justice, Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security
We filed suit against the Department of Justice, Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security to compel the production of documents related to a Trump-Vance administration agreement with El Salvador that has allowed hundreds of people to be disappeared from the United States to be held in jails and prisons in El Salvador.
In early February 2025, the administration announced that, following a trip to El Salvador by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the United States would enter an agreement with El Salvador to send people detained in the United States — including potentially even United States citizens — to El Salvador jails and prisons. On March 15, 2025, the administration sent more than 200 people to El Salvador, many of them under an assertion that they were subject to the Alien Enemies Act, where they have been held in government custody, including in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
Democracy Forward has submitted a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the three agencies after the agreement was announced, seeking:
- Draft copies of the agreement,
- Any legal analysis of the proposal, and
- Communications surrounding the agreement.
- Though all three agencies confirmed receipt of the requests, none of the three has produced the requested information in the legally required time.