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.

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.