SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In an early morning order today, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to temporarily cease deporting a group of Venezuelans currently detained under the Alien Enemies Act. The administration has accused these migrants of being gang members and invoked an 18th century wartime law to deport them to El Salvador. The U.S. has already sent at least 261 migrants to El Salvador. The Trump administration says it's exploring sending even more people it alleges are criminals, including U.S. citizens. Legal experts say that sending people to certain foreign prisons is akin to dropping them into a black box where they don't have the protections people in U.S. custody are afforded. NPR criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson joins us. Meg, thanks for being with us.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: We know that hundreds of immigrants have already been sent to El Salvador. What kind of conditions do they face there?
ANDERSON: Yeah. So the mega prison that they were sent to is known as CECOT, and it is notorious. Human rights groups have reported torture and medical neglect in that prison and other Salvadoran prisons, and say inmates are often denied due process and even contact with family and lawyers. Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, put that situation in perspective for me.
MICHELE DEITCH: It would be an absolutely Kafkaesque situation where the family has no idea where the person is, what kind of conditions they're being held in, whether they're even alive.
ANDERSON: And I should mention, U.S. courts have said that the people taken to El Salvador got limited or no due process before they were sent there, something they are legally entitled to. And now that they're in El Salvador, the administration is saying they no longer have control over what happens to them.
SIMON: And what does that mean for those people?
ANDERSON: Well, it means that they're being deprived of protections that they would have had if they had been held in the United States. The government here has a duty by law to care for people in its custody. U.S. prisons and immigration detention centers are far from perfect, to be sure, but there are still layers of oversight. The federal government monitors and inspects its prisons and detention centers. People in custody have the right to pursue legal action if they allege abuse or neglect, and judges can intervene when laws are violated. Legal experts I spoke to said it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to see how any of that could happen once people are in a Salvadoran prison.
SIMON: And, Meg, we also know that President Trump and Attorney General Bondi are exploring the idea of sending what they call homegrown criminals abroad. Would their situation be any different?
ANDERSON: So the Trump administration has clarified that, quote, "homegrowns" in this case means U.S. citizens. And I should note that legal experts say there is absolutely no U.S. law that would give Trump the ability to send U.S. citizens to foreign prisons. But if someone in the U.S. is convicted of a crime, their constitutional rights, like the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, should, in theory, still apply no matter where they're sent. That's according to Lauren-Brooke Eisen. She's the senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice. But she says...
LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN: The worry is that once someone is sent outside of the jurisdiction of the United States, it becomes much more difficult to protect and enforce their constitutional rights.
SIMON: And what does the federal government say about all this?
ANDERSON: So I reached out to both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security for this story. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the immigrants sent to El Salvador are, quote, "terrorists," that they had final deportation orders, and that there was due process, but she did not provide any evidence for those assertions. The DOJ, for its part, did not respond to questions about outsourcing U.S. prisoners abroad.
SIMON: NPR's Meg Anderson. Thanks so much.
ANDERSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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