Rights groups urge UN to probe US deportations to El Salvador

WASHINGTON: Dozens of civil rights organizations and legal professionals have urged the United Nations to take immediate action over El Salvador's detention of migrants deported from the United States.
US President Donald Trump's administration has paid El Salvador millions of dollars to lock up scores of migrants it says are criminals and gang members, in a maximum security prison with a history of alleged human rights violations.
The deal between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is a "blatant violation of international human rights obligations," groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a joint letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday.

The letter urged the United Nations to "take immediate and meaningful action" by "publicly addressing the alarming international legal and human rights violations" and "investigating the terms of the agreement and conditions of confinement."
The ACLU has sent a separate letter to two UN special rapporteurs for the protection of human rights, asking them to hold urgent talks with the United States and El Salvador.
Since March, 288 migrants accused by the Trump administration of belonging to gangs including Tren de Aragua -- now defined as a terrorist organization by Washington -- have been shipped to El Salvador.
Bukele has offered Venezuela a trade of 252 Venezuelans deported to his country by the United States for an equal number of political prisoners held by President Nicolas Maduro's regime.
The US Supreme Court blocked Trump this month from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport the migrants without due process. The legislation was last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
The letter's signatories said the Trump administation's deportations "recall the sordid history of the United States' extraordinary renditions to foreign torture sites and the Guantanamo Bay prison facility," in a "similar attempt to evade judicial review and accountability."
Human Rights Watch said in a report this month that El Salvador and the United States have subjected dozens of people to "enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention."