Trump admin claimed CECOT held worst "terrorists." Then they just let them go

[marmar]

Trump admin claimed CECOT held worst “terrorists.” Then they just let them go
The administration, by its own logic, freed the world’s most dangerous terrorists at a 25-to-1 exchange rate

By Charles R. Davis
News Editor
Published July 24, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) They were, beyond a doubt, the “worst of the worst.” Torture, rape, murder — you name it, that’s the sort of thing that an immigrant probably did to deserve being sent to CECOT, El Salvador’s infamous detention center, which up until recently held more than 250 Venezuelans accused of being some of the most violent criminals on planet Earth. They were so bad, it was said, better viewed as an invading army than as individual humans with inalienable rights, that one could skip the whole trial-and-jury thing and jump straight to a sentence of life behind bars in a foreign prison.

“I’ve talked to the highest level at ICE,” U.S. border czar Tom Homan said in April, “and they’ve reassured me several times: Everyone that was removed under the Alien Enemies Act was a gang member and a terrorist.”

....(snip)....

In a July 18 post on social media, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that the Venezuelans held in his country were headed to South America in return for 10 Americans being held by the government in Caracas. In the end, the Trump administration decided to release — by its own logic — some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, back to the criminal organization that directed their actions, at a 25-to-1 exchange rate.

It’s less confounding when one considers that the Trump administration had access to the same information as the general public. Despite its outward-facing rhetoric, the administration knew that the majority of those sent to CECOT had never been convicted of a crime of any nature, in the U.S. or elsewhere. Many were not even “illegal immigrants,” having entered the country only after scheduling an asylum interview; more than 60 had pending asylum claims at the time they were shoved onto a plane headed to El Salvador, in defiance of a court order. And U.S. intelligence had already determined that the claim of a Venezuelan-directed gang invasion was bogus (Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, attacked her own analysts as “deep state actors”).

Victims of this propaganda campaign — an effort to parade brown bodies before Fox News’ prime-time audience — included Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay man, hairstylist and asylum-seeker who was determined to be a vicious gang member based solely on a pair of tattoos dedicated to his mother and father. For more than 120 days, his family and attorneys were denied any information about him; they did not know whether he was dead or alive, and they only knew he was ever at CECOT because he was brutalized upon arrival, and that brutalization was captured on video. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/24/trump-admin-claimed-cecot-held-worst-terrorists-then-they-just-let-them-go/

[Irish_Dem]

1. Trump probably wants to hire them for the Trump family crime syndicate.