US homeland security secretary visits prison in El Salvador holding deported Venezuelans

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has visited the mega-prison in El Salvador where hundreds of Venezuelans recently deported by the Trump administration are being detained.

The senior American official was given a tour on Wednesday of the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), a facility Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele built as part of his gang crackdown.

Noem filmed a social media video from the jail, in which she directed a strongly worded message at immigrants.

The prison is “one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people”, she warned in the video, which showed her in front of a packed dormitory-style cell.

More than 230 Venezuelans are currently housed at the facility, having been apprehended in the US earlier this month. The swoop came after Bukele offered to house people sent from the US in El Salvador’s prison system.

Despite the US government’s claim that all these Venezuelans are gang members, some of their families back home insist they have no ties to any criminal group.

Reports are steadily emerging of people arrested and dispatched to El Salvador simply on the basis of being Venezuelan and having tattoos, which in some cases bore no resemblance to anything used by a gang.

None of the people loaded onto the flights had access to legal representation or due process between their arrest and the planes' departure. A lawyer hired by the government in Caracas is now attempting to have them freed.

These efforts come as a US appeals court on Wednesday kept in place an order preventing the Trump administration from deporting more Venezuelans under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows non-citizens to be expelled without appearing before a judge.

Earlier this week, a US judge hit out at the Trump government over its use of the law.

“There were plane loads of people,” Judge Patricia Millett said of the Venezuelan deportations. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act than has happened here,” she added.

In El Salvador, Noem, who will also visit Colombia and Mexico as part of a three-day tour of the region, did not directly comment on what will happen to the Venezuelans currently held at the CECOT.

After her visit to the prison, she met with Bukele, who is popular with the American right for his anti-gang clampdown in El Salvador.

The Salvadoran president’s critics accuse his government of committing large-scale human rights abuses, pointing to evidence that thousands of innocent people have been arrested and imprisoned in harsh conditions without due process.

Critics also say that Bukele, who is serving a second presidential term despite constitutional limits, has undermined democracy to amass more power.

“This unprecedented relationship we have with El Salvador is going to be a model for other countries on how they can work with America,” Noem said on Wednesday.