The following is a translation of the statement issued by the Bloque de Resistencia Y Rebeldía Popular, a group of organizations from the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchal popular movement of El Salvador.
We reject the criminalization of the migrant population and the violation of Salvadoran sovereignty by Trump and Bukele.
As a Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc, we raise our voices to strongly denounce the flagrant violation of national sovereignty and human rights perpetrated through the agreement between the Donald Trump administration and the Nayib Bukele regime. This pact entails the forced arrival of 238 people into our territory, evidencing the complicity of a government that has decided to subjugate itself to the imperialist interests of the United States, as we have denounced on previous occasions.
We denounce that many of these people have been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, without having been tried in due process and without conclusive evidence demonstrating their involvement in criminal activities in other United States. This arbitrary and dehumanizing act not only violates the basic principles of international law, but also makes our country complicit in the xenophobic and criminalizing immigration policy promoted by the Trump regime.
This constitutes an act that demonstrates the fascist, racist, and defiant nature of basic human rights conventions on the part of the Donald Trump and Bukele governments, who attribute to themselves the power to kidnap, deport, and imprison people simply for being Venezuelan and accuse them of belonging to a criminal group, without any evidence and without the right to defense.
Furthermore, it is alarming that among those deported are gang leaders who, according to journalistic investigations, were illegally released during the Bukele administration as part of agreements between the regime and the gangs to sustain the pact. These deportations seek to prevent these criminal leaders from revealing details about the pact Bukele maintains with these criminal groups. This situation not only demonstrates the Salvadoran government’s double standards, but also puts the security of our region at risk by allowing dangerous criminals to go free.
We express our deepest solidarity with the Venezuelan and other families whose loved ones have been arbitrarily arrested and accused of crimes they did not commit, as evidenced by pending legal proceedings and the constant complaints filed by the families of victims who have been falsely accused of being criminals simply for being migrants. This policy of mass persecution and criminalization, based on racial and xenophobic prejudices, seeks to stigmatize and persecute those fleeing poverty, violence, and oppression generated by the same imperialist policies that condemn them today.
We demand the immediate release of all those unjustly detained and unrestricted respect for their right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. We categorically reject the use of our territory as a detention camp for people who have been victims of a cruel and dehumanizing immigration system.
We call on all social organizations, grassroots movements, and the people in general to stand up and fight against these policies that violate our sovereignty and dignity. We will continue to denounce the imperialist intention to turn our country into an instrument where they can imprison people who are neither Salvadoran nor have committed any crime in this territory, and to continue violating the rights of migrants and their families.
For our sovereignty and that of the people!
For the freedom of those arbitrarily detained!
Against imperialism and the criminalization of migrants!
San Salvador, March 18, 2025
