Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waded into the debate over a recently pulled “60 Minutes” story highlighting the conditions at El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison — but Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele pushed back.
The twice-failed presidential candidate shared a video after CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled a story on the prison, promising a look at what was really going on.
“Curious to learn more about CECOT? Hear Juan, Andry, and Wilmer share firsthand how the Trump administration branded them as gang members without evidence and deported them to the brutal El Salvadoran prison,” Clinton posted. The video she shared, originally from PBS News, interviewed three Venezuelan men who had been deported to the prison by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Salvadoran President Bukele responded to Clinton with a lengthy post of his own and proposed a trade-off: “Madam Secretary Hillary Clinton, If you are convinced that torture is taking place at CECOT, El Salvador is ready to cooperate fully,” Bukele began in his response. “We are willing to release our entire prison population (including all gang leaders and all those described as ‘political prisoners’) to any country willing to receive them. The only condition is straightforward: it must be everyone.”
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“This would also greatly assist journalists and your favorite NGOs, who would then have thousands of former inmates available for interviews, making it far easier to find additional voices critical of the Salvadoran government (or willing to confirm whatever conclusions are already expected),” Bukele continued. “Surely, if these testimonies reflect a systemic reality, a much larger pool of sources should only reinforce the claim, and many governments should be eager to offer protection.”
His conclusion was simple: “Until then, we will continue prioritizing the human rights of the millions of Salvadorans who today live free from gang rule. Respectfully, Nayib Bukele.”
A number of others also responded to Clinton’s post, with some referencing the fact that when she was First Lady, her husband — then-President Bill Clinton — had played a role in deporting Salvadoran gang members back to El Salvador en masse.
Many of those Salvadoran criminals — who had come to the United States as their country was being torn apart by civil war — formed MS-13 in Los Angeles. When the Clinton administration first expanded the list of crimes that could result in deportation and then began deporting MS-13 members in large numbers, the still-rebuilding Salvadoran government was unable to handle the overwhelming number of gang members being dropped at their doorstep.