I was born and raised in a democracy, which may sound like a “normal” statement to many. However, this wasn’t the case in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s, when military dictatorships were the norm. While people in South America’s Southern Cone were resisting authoritarian regimes, I was happily attending school with classmates from Chile and elsewhere. In my home country, Venezuela, we were accustomed to living alongside individuals from across the Americas who sought refuge from authoritarian governments or were searching for a better life. Their stories —testimonies from those whose friends, relatives, and loved ones had “disappeared” or were “political prisoners”— were difficult for me to fully comprehend. Little did I know that now, in the past decade, my native country would lose its own democracy and start accumulating its own stories of disappearances and arbitrary detentions. We had taken democracy for granted.
As a human rights defender, I have spent more than two decades speaking with the relatives of the disappeared in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and other countries where governments have either directly and actively disappeared people or have allowed individuals or groups to carry them out with impunity. I have also listened to the stories of mothers from Chile and Argentina who have been searching for their loved ones for over thirty or forty years.
In each case, there is a common pattern: governments are willing to remove individuals from the protection of the law, placing them in a limbo where anything can happen. This is why enforced disappearance is considered a gross human rights violation under international law. It defines this serious crime as one in which a person is arrested and deprived of their liberty by state agents (or by individuals acting with the support or authorization of the state), followed by a denial that the detention took place, or a concealment of the disappeared person’s whereabouts. When a state commits enforced disappearances, it’s not just a human rights violation — it’s a warning for democracy.
At the Washington Office on Latin America, we have dedicated the past few weeks to documenting, demanding actions, and denouncing the plight of the 238 Venezuelan migrants and about 50 others sent by the U.S. government to the CECOT (Center for the Confinement of Terrorists), a prison in El Salvador infamous for its inhumane conditions. The news of the transferred migrants shocked the region. No one knew their identities, and desperate relatives —both in Venezuela and in the U.S.— were forced to watch footage released by the government of El Salvador, hoping to pick out the face of a loved one among the images of shackled men being shaved by security guards.
The constant pain of not knowing a loved one’s whereabouts, amid an endless search for any clue that might lead to finding them, is a feeling many in Latin America know too well. The helplessness of looking for your son or daughter who left home one morning for work and was never heard from again. The despair of a relative whose detained loved one “disappears” in prison, with no official able or willing to provide information about their fate or location. The insomnia of a wife whose husband leaves the kids at school and then vanishes for years without a trace. We have witnessed enforced disappearances in the past in Latin America —and we are witnessing them again today, especially in countries ruled by ruthless authoritarian leaders or experiencing serious democratic backsliding.
I am equally alarmed by what the CECOT renditions could signify for U.S. democracy. The Trump administration invoked a centuries-old law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, meant for the context of war, to exercise immigration control. Since their confinement, the 238 migrants have remained incommunicado. Relatives have resorted to using a list leaked to CBS News —currently the only source available— to identify the names of those transferred. Official sources of information have been closed, like the Online Detainee Locator System, from where Human Rights Watch found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had apparently removed some of the migrants sooner than is standard practice. In El Salvador, Cristosal, one of the region’s leading human rights organizations, filed formal information requests to both the Office of the President and the Department of Prisons. Both were denied.
We constantly hear about the migrants locked up in CECOT: a makeup artist, a professional soccer player, and others unjustly imprisoned in a third country. Yet, to this day, the U.S. government has not officially disclosed their names. In fact, by claiming “state secrets privilege”, the administration has refused to provide information about the transfer flights to El Salvador and other details of the operation, despite a court’s order requesting the information. The Trump administration has effectively chosen to defy the U.S. judiciary and, in doing so, undermines a key principle of any democratic society: the constitutional rule of law.
U.S. Americans and others around the world must take note of the facts and their legal and political consequences: 238 Venezuelan migrants were detained by the U.S. government and transferred to a megaprison in a third country, their names removed from official databases, and their identities and whereabouts never officially disclosed or provided to their relatives or legal representatives by either of the two governments involved in the removal proceedings (i.e. concealment of the person’s fate or whereabouts). Under international human rights law, this may amount to a case of mass enforced disappearances, the very crime that countless citizens across Latin America have suffered and one that continues to haunt the region today.
The migrants could not challenge their removal, a due-process guarantee later upheld by the Supreme Court. Furthermore, an ICE official acknowledged in court that “many” of the migrants removed to El Salvador do not have criminal records in the United States. In fact, Bloomberg News reviewed hundreds of pages of U.S. federal court records, media reports, and public statements and found that about 90 percent of those removed had no criminal records in the United States.
Why is this important for democracy? Democracy is a system where communities should be able to live without fear and where rules and laws are respected. When governments engage in enforced disappearances —even short-term ones— they send a terrifying message: They have claimed the power to detain a person without due process and decide whether or not their loved ones can know where they are.
The recent visit of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to Washington, D.C., gave President Trump an opportunity to suggest he is also exploring sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons. While experts agree this is prohibited under U.S. law, we must confront what the alleged enforced disappearance of 238 migrants represents: the use of arbitrary power and a direct threat to democracy. The more unchecked power a government exerts over people, the more fragile democracy becomes.
Dr. Carolina Jiménez Sandoval is the President of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
