Trump has custody over jailed CECOT migrants, El Salvador says, complicating court fights

The government of El Salvador told the United Nations that more than 100 Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to its maximum-security prison, CECOT, in March remain under the sole custody of the U.S. government — appearing to undercut months of assertions by senior Trump officials, who have repeatedly claimed they have no power to compel the return of these individuals.

The U.N. report was included Monday in a court filing submitted by lawyers for the ACLU and other migrant groups representing more than 100 detainees at CECOT who are challenging their removal from the U.S. to the maximum-security Salvadorian prison.

The filing included a copy of statements made by the Salvadorian government to a U.N. human rights office in April, as part of an investigation brought on behalf of four families.

At the time, El Salvador officials told the U.N. that the "jurisdiction and legal responsibility" for detainees sent by the U.S. to CECOT in March lies "exclusively" with the U.S., citing a $6 million agreement it struck with the U.S. in March to host roughly 300 migrant prisoners.

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Judge James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Mar. 16, 2023. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

That assertion came roughly one month after the Trump administration in March invoked a 1798 wartime immigration law to more quickly deport Venezuelan nationals, including alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. 

Prior to March, the U.S. invoked the law just three times, including most recently during World War II.

Lawyers representing the migrants argued Monday that the statement included in the U.N. report should be grounds for plaintiffs to seek additional discovery in the case, which had been overseen by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg beginning in March.

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More than 250 suspected gang members, after arriving in El Salvador by plane, are seen in San Salvador, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025. (El Salvador Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

"Since March, the Trump-Vance administration has sought to operate in the shadows without public transparency as it removes people from the country under false pretenses or without any process at all," Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which is representing the CECOT detainees alongside the ACLU, said in a statement this week.

"This is a threat to every single American, and is a threat to our democracy as a whole," Perryman added.

It could also breathe new life into a flurry of stalled immigration cases nationwide.

As of this writing, the revelation has already had a knock-down effect on at least one case involving a CECOT migrant ordered back to the U.S. by a federal judge.

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Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, to protest the Trump administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March in what administration officials said was an administrative error, on July 7, 2025. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, ordered the administration on Wednesday to explain its position to the court in light of the new revelations.

"Defendants have repeatedly skirted this Court's directive to provide information regarding the steps they have taken and will take to facilitate the return of ['Cristian’] to the United States," the judge wrote in an order Wednesday evening, referring to a man deported to El Salvador in March.

She noted that the defendants "have repeatedly made oblique references to their request of 'assistance' from the U.S. Department of State, which has 'entered into negotiations to facilitate Cristian's return' and 'assumed responsibility on behalf of the U.S. Government for ... diplomatic discussions with El Salvador.'"

Gallagher ruled in April that the government violated a 2024 settlement between DHS and a group of young asylum seekers in deporting him before his case was fully heard in court.

As of this writing, however, he has not been returned to the country. 

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U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, ordered the administration on Wednesday to explain its position to the court in light of the new revelations. (Getty)

The revelation could also come to the fore in another major hearing this week.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis will hear from Trump administration officials and lawyers for Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia as she weighs a request from Abrego's attorneys to transfer him back to U.S. custody in Maryland.

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Abrego is currently in the custody of U.S. Marshals in Tennesee but could be released as early as next week. Plaintiffs have cited deep concerns that the Trump administration would immediately seek to take him into ICE custody upon release and deport him to a third country— a notion the administration did not dispute.

 Xinis, for her part, has taken umbrage with the Trump administration's evasiveness and slow-walking of information, which she likened earlier this week to "trying to nail Jell-O to a wall."