A coalition of immigrant rights organizations and criminal defense lawyers filed a lawsuit to block the U.S. State Department’s backdoor agreement with El Salvador to implement the Trump-Vance administration’s practice of disappearing people indefinitely from U.S. territory into El Salvador’s prison system without due process, legal justification, or public accountability.
The lawsuit challenges the agreement, which has facilitated the rendition of hundreds of people to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a facility infamous for torture, starvation, and indefinite isolated detention.
Under the agreement, the United States is paying El Salvador up to $20,000 per person to open what has been described by human rights observers as a “tropical gulag” to those the U.S. government wishes to disappear, depriving people of legal counsel, medical care, visits by family or clergy, sunlight and effectively outsourcing violations of the U.S. Constitution and human rights protections.
The complaint alleges that the State Department’s actions violate the Administrative Procedure Act, the U.S. Constitution, including the Fifth (due process), Sixth (right to counsel), and Eighth (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) Amendments. The agreement also bypasses U.S. immigration law, ignores federal regulations on detention and procurement, and violates international treaties like the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
On September 9, 2025 Democracy Forward secured the release of the document after filing a motion challenging the government’s claim that it should remain out of public view.
According to the newly released correspondence, El Salvador agreed to detain people rendered from the U.S. before President Trump signed a proclamation purporting to invoke the Alien Enemies Act and to remove individuals from U.S. territory. On March 22, 2025, after the administration ignored a federal court order and removed more than 200 individuals to El Salvador without proper process, the U.S. Department of State provided El Salvador with $4.76 million.
The correspondence indicates that, as a condition of the funds, the U.S. required El Salvador to agree, among other things, to refrain from assisting asylum seekers in obtaining resources and counsel or using the funds to provide reproductive health care. Notably, the grant agreement does not have any provisions requiring that El Salvador refrain from torturing, detaining people in indefinite confinement, or avoiding other abusive practices inside CECOT.
Plaintiffs in this case include Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Immigration Equality, and California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice; all represented by Democracy Forward. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights also represents itself.
The case is Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights et al. v. U.S. Department of State, et al.