US State Department is lying to the international community.
This includes especially El Salvador, about whom the State Department is, frankly, lying to the international community.
I serve as an expert witness on country conditions in El Salvador for U.S. immigration courts when people are applying for asylum or protection under the Convention Against Torture. To do so, I swear under oath that I am telling the truth, both in my written reports and orally when called to testify.
This oath is not unlike the oath the American diplomats who put together these country reports take. Their work is meant to be apolitical and nonpartisan.
The alliance between President Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has been very much in the news. El Salvador’s sale of space in its prisons to help the U.S. expel immigrants provides a clear motive for the State Department to claim that there are no human rights abuses in Salvadoran prisons. Yet this is in direct conflict with reports from human rights organizations that refute many of the claims made in the department’s reports.
To determine the capability of the Salvadoran state to protect people from various forms of violence, I draw on my social science toolkit of research methods. I scrutinize reports from human rights organizations based both in El Salvador and internationally. I analyze independent and state media articles and read the academic, peer-reviewed literature on relevant topics. I draw on nearly two decades of relationships in the country, based in extensive fieldwork there over many years, including as recently as 2024, when I documented a range of concerning human rights abuses there.
I, like other human rights experts, also read the State Department Human Rights Reports and have cited them for many years in relation to my own assessments of danger to particular social groups. For example, the 2023 country report on El Salvador found credible reports of “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions,” which is consistent with everything else I have observed.
In short, I triangulate my information about human rights violations and protections in El Salvador in assessing the cases I work on. In addition to most recently visiting the country in 2024, I use a mix of government and nongovernmental sources to try to determine the truth.
In light of new information about its reporting on country conditions in El Salvador, I fear I can no longer rely on the U.S. State Department as a credible source. Its report for El Salvador states that there are “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in the country. I beg to differ. A long list of human rights organizations — such as Cristosal, which is based in the country, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — all attest to the same.
In my scholarly work — including a peer-reviewed journal article on El Salvador’s mega-prison CECOT — my co-author and I document human rights abuses and how the Bukele administration is trying to justify them. We have extensive citations showing credible sources for our claims, and I am on the record for these claims both in court and in the media.
Incarcerated Salvadorans are packed into grossly overcrowded cells, beaten regularly by prison personnel and denied medicines. Inmates are frequently subjected to punishments including food deprivation and electric shocks. Such systemic abuses have not yet improved.
The leaked reports are consistent with Rubio’s recent effort to have “certified” El Salvador as taking measures to uphold the rule of law, a self-serving move that also contradicts the facts on the ground.
For people in El Salvador subject to abuse, and those who come to the U.S. seeking refuge, an accurate portrayal of the truth is vital to justice and the rule of law. Human rights are jeopardized when American policy is not honest
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