El Salvador judge orders detention of prominent lawyer Ruth Lopez
SAN SALVADOR, June 4 (Reuters) - A judge in El Salvador ordered the provisional detention of prominent lawyer Ruth Lopez, human rights group Cristosal said on Wednesday.
Lopez, a well-known human rights and anti-corruption advocate, was arrested by Salvadoran authorities last month over allegations of embezzlement during her time as a state official.
She left Wednesday's hearing shouting that she was innocent and said she had now been charged with illicit enrichment.
"I am a political prisoner. All the charges are because of my legal work, due to my denunciation of corruption in this government," Lopez added.
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The Guardian
8 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘They are pushing us out': how El Salvador turned to gang violence laws to seize land from the poor
In early May, the farming cooperative of El Bosque in Santa Tecla, one of El Salvador's largest cities, received an eviction notice; a new battle in a decades-old fight for land. In response, community members organised a peaceful sit-in near hardline President Nayib Bukele's private residence, hoping to appeal directly for help. Instead, they were confronted by military police. The protest ended in five detentions: four members of the cooperative and its lawyer. The arrests were met by a wave of panic. The cooperative's president, José Ángel Pérez, and Alejandro Henríquez, a lawyer and human rights activist supporting the group, were formally charged with public disorder. Under the government's extended 'state of exception', which suspends certain constitutional protections, their legal status has caused uncertainty among people in El Bosque. 'Our leaders have been detained without cause just for speaking out. That is not a crime,' says Douglas, a cooperative member who prefers not to reveal his surname. 'They took them to send us a message. If we organise, we'll be next.' According to another person who requested anonymity, members of the nearly 300 families being displaced attempted to leave El Bosque to join the protest that day but were stopped at a police checkpoint about 9km (6 miles) from the village. Cars were turned back or the occupants fined $150 (£110), forcing many to continue on foot. The protest outside Bukele's luxury Los Sueños home ended when military police and riot police arrived. 'They hit many of us when we tried to stop them from taking our leaders,' the resident says. El Bosque is not just any piece of land. Like many others in El Salvador, it was granted to landless peasants during the 12-year civil war that started in 1980. Land redistribution was promised as a key step toward peace and social justice, a process that led to the formation of hundreds of rural cooperatives. On the day of the protest, Bukele posted a thread on X accusing the protesters of being manipulated by 'self-proclaimed leftist groups and globalist NGOs', whose real goal, he claimed, is to 'attack the government'. In the same thread, he announced a new tax change that would withhold 30% from all foreign donations to local NGOs, a move likely to affect organisations involved in rural and human rights defence. Originally justified as a tool to counter gang violence in El Salvador, the state of exception has now been extended more than 38 times. Critics argue it is increasingly used in contexts involving environmental or land-related conflict. On 20 May, the legislative assembly passed the foreign agents law, which imposes additional financial and legal requirements on NGOs that receive international funding. 'They turned the right to defend rights and peaceful protest into crimes,' says Ingrid Escobar, director of Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (Humanitarian Legal Aid). 'They have effectively applied the mechanisms of the state of exception, even though this is not a gang-related case. The leaders have been held longer than the law permits.' This concern is supported by the attorney general's charging document, which explicitly states that the charges against Pérez and Henríquez – public disorder and aggressive resistance – fall under the framework of the state of exception, citing national security justifications established by emergency decrees since March 2022. The case of El Bosque resonates beyond Santa Tecla. In a coastal cooperative near the airport megaproject, Elmer Martínez and 35 households face eviction by 20 June. 'My six acres of farmland were taken without compensation. I'm trying to get one last harvest from the land,' he says. 'We never asked for much – just to live where we've always lived.' Although the housing ministry has started building him a new home, Martínez adds, 'I won't stop until every family in my community has their property titles.' According to Ángel Flores, a spokesperson for the rural advocacy group Milpa, at least 45 similar land disputes are under way across the country. 'Megaprojects, extractivism, real estate and tourism developments, and agribusiness are all driving a new wave of dispossession,' Flores says. 'About 11,000 families are in extreme vulnerability.' These families often face legal uncertainty and sudden eviction notices, backed by the presence of police or private security. In the coastal village of Punta Mango, near the newly inaugurated Surf City 2 project, fisher Rosa Romero describes how her community, settled more than three decades ago, has never received formal land titles from the state. 'We've lived here for more than 30 years. But now, with Surf City 2, people have shown up claiming to own this land,' she says, adding that the arrival of tourism-linked businesses has put mounting pressure on local people. 'We're about 300 families, and they're pushing us out. We just want the government to recognise our right to stay.' In El Salvador, environmental assessments are rare, and local people are often excluded from consultations. Legal ambiguity, especially civil war-era unresolved land titles, has become a central point of tension in development projects. The 1980s land redistribution programme aimed to address rural inequality by transferring land to subsistence farmers. But many titles were never recognised by later governments, leaving communities vulnerable to dispossession. Passed just days after the El Bosque arrests, El Salvador's new foreign agents law requires any organisation receiving international funds to register with the interior ministry and pay a 30% tax on such donations. The authorities can impose fines and revoke the legal status of non-compliant organisations. Bukele has presented the measure as a means to enhance transparency and national sovereignty. He also suggested that the revenue generated could help address debts related to the El Bosque land dispute. Critics argue that the law not only fails to specify how the taxed money would be used but could also weaken civil society by restricting legal aid, curtailing public participation and reducing the operational capacity of NGOs and independent media. Bukele has used his platforms to discredit NGOs, accusing them of staging protests and opposing development initiatives and portraying civil society groups as being aligned to foreign interests. Several NGOs are considering shutting down or relocating staff. Legal aid groups warn they may no longer be able to represent communities such as El Bosque. The removal of the communities of El Triunfo, Las Granadillas and Cooperativa El Bosque has been temporarily suspended by the courts without any reason being given for the suspension – but the fear remains. Police are still posted nearby, and local people tread cautiously. The decision to impose pretrial detention for Pérez and Henríquez added to the sense of despair in El Bosque. Milpa's Flores says: 'We are witnessing a national project to redistribute and centralise land under the guise of modernisation and legal order. The legal system is no longer a neutral referee. It's becoming a tool to decide who gets to belong.'
The Independent
15 hours ago
- The Independent
Immigrant rights groups sue to invalidate Trump administration's El Salvador prison deal
A coalition of immigrant rights groups on Thursday sued to invalidate the Trump administration's deal to house detainees in a notorious prison in El Salvador, saying the arrangement to move migrant detainees outside the reach of U.S. courts violates the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., notes that the administration has argued that those sent to El Salvador are beyond the reach of U.S. courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other U.S. constitutional guarantees. The deal, the plaintiffs allege, 'is contrary to law. And it was entered into without any legal basis.' The administration has sent hundreds of migrants to El Salvador, including some it accuses of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration in March agreed to pay $6 million for El Salvador to house 300 migrants. President Donald Trump has said he'd like to eventually send U.S. citizen criminals to the Salvadoran prison, though that'd likely be unconstitutional. The lawsuit notes that the State Department has reported that inmates in El Salvador's prisons may be subject to 'harsh and life-threatening' conditions, torture and lack access to reliable food, water and medical care. The prisons are run by the government of El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, who once called himself 'the world's coolest dictator' and has posted images of detainees sent from the U.S. getting marched into his centerpiece prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In one notorious case cited in the lawsuit, the Trump administration has not returned Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man it deported to El Salvador in violation of a judge's order, saying the man is no longer in its custody. That was the administration's argument when another judge ordered it to halt deportations under an 18th century wartime act — that the deportees were on a plane to El Salvador and outside the legal reach of federal judges. The suit was filed by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Immigrant Equality, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel in a separate lawsuit over the initial flights to El Salvador. Thursday's lawsuit says the deal violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which prevents agencies like the State Department, which reached the deal with El Salvador, from undertaking unconstitutional or otherwise illegal acts. In addition to violating the constitution, the suit notes that housing prisoners in El Salvador violates the First Step Act, a law requiring federal prisons to try to house inmates close to home. That law was signed by Trump in 2018.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Trump's crusade against all immigrants – even legal ones – is unprecedented
The Donald Trump administration has billed itself as taking unprecedented steps to crack down on illegal immigration. While the total number of deportations has yet to surge, it may happen soon. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, supports suspending habeas corpus to speed up deportations, and the border czar, Tom Homan, has suggested blatantly ignoring court orders. Private companies are also lining up to cash in on mass deportations. Nonetheless, Trump's approach so far to immigration deemed illegal has not differed much from what Barack Obama and Joe Biden did. So why does everything feel different? The answer is that Trump has launched an unprecedented crusade against legal immigrants. And the tactics have been jarringly lawless and cruel. For example, Trump's administration has almost completely banned refugee resettlement, sought to revoke temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands who have immigrated to flee extreme conditions, eliminated the legal status of thousands of international students, arrested legal asylum seekers at their immigration check-ins, jailed other legal asylum seekers in a maximum security prison in El Salvador, declared an end to birthright citizenship and revoked the legal status of nearly a million humanitarian parolees who had applied for legal entry using the CBP One app. While the Obama and Biden administrations likewise took aggressive measures to regulate undocumented immigration – thus earning well-founded criticisms from immigration activists who took to calling Obama the 'deporter-in-chief' – both presidents also worked to expand the pathways for legal immigration. Some of their initiatives were blocked by Congress or the courts, but the result was a net expansion of legal immigration under both administrations. On the other hand, Trump has consistently worked to block as many pathways to legal migration as possible. In Trump's first term, certain aspects of his immigration agenda were similarly constrained by Congress or the courts, but the result was still a major decrease in legal immigration. In Trump's second term, this assault on legal immigrants has escalated at a furious pace, and while courts have already found many of these actions illegal according to long-established precedent, the administration shows no sign of slowing down. Indeed, Trump officials have become increasingly bold in defying court rulings, and all of this is taking place under the watch of a supreme court so Trump-friendly that last year it granted him sweeping immunity to commit crimes. As a historian of border policy, I find Tump's attack on the CBP One app especially demoralizing. A longstanding contradiction in our immigration system is that while technically people have the right to apply for asylum once they reach US soil, it is incredibly difficult to arrive in the US to exercise this right. Accordingly, the only legal way to immigrate for the vast majority of people is to first survive a deadly gauntlet of oceans, jungles, deserts and criminal organizations, and only then begin an asylum application, which is still a long shot. David Fitzgerald's 2019 book Refuge Beyond Reach offers a detailed description of this insidious system and its long history. While it was largely unappreciated at the time, the Biden administration took meaningful steps to address this deadly contradiction by creating a way to legally apply for asylum through the CBP One app while still abroad. This enabled people facing grave humanitarian crises to start applications outside the US, and if approved, they could then buy plane tickets and travel to the US safely with humanitarian parole. The initiative was successful, legal, and in many ways, historic. Hundreds of thousands of people were able to migrate legally and escape extremely difficult conditions. This infuriated conservatives, who launched a barrage of vicious lies to demonize the program and the people using it. JD Vance insisted on the debate stage that these immigrants were illegal, and when corrected by debate moderators, whined that fact-checking was against the rules. Ted Cruz used his podcast to accuse Biden of chartering flights to bring in undocumented people who would vote Democrat. And Trump accused them of eating pets. Just by cancelling the program for future enrollees, Trump is already launching a disturbing assault on legal immigration. Yet in an escalation of cruelty that is difficult to even comprehend, Trump canceled the program retroactively as well, capriciously revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of extremely vulnerable people who simply followed the rules. If you think that that sounds dystopian and cruel, you're right. And that's exactly the point: cruelty itself is a tactic to scare immigrants away. The child separation policy from Trump's first term was an early example of this penchant for using visible displays of cruelty as an immigration deterrent and his new administration has worked around the clock to invent creative new horrors: from shipping deportees to Guantánamo Bay, to sending masked agents to disappear students, to indefinitely detaining immigrants with no criminal record in a notoriously dangerous prison in El Salvador (many of whom were arrested while attending legal immigration appointments), and then sending Noem to El Salvador to do a photoshoot with these political prisoners as props. The message to immigrants is clear: leave, or never come in the first place, because this could happen to you, even if you do it 'the right way'. The takeaway from all of this is that right now, real people – our friends, families, students and neighbors – are suffering at the hands of a cruel and lawless government. And while Republican policymakers are driving these actions, many centrist Democrats, such as Gavin Newsom, are giving tacit approval by writing off these disturbing human rights violations as merely the 'distraction of the day'. I refuse to ignore this suffering. I hope you refuse as well. Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College.
