Rubio
WASHINGTON - Human rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for sending undocumented aliens to El Salvador, where they say conditions are deplorable.
One of them - Robert Kennedy F. Human Rights - started after the assassination of RFK in 1968. His son, RFK Jr., is now the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Other plaintiffs in the June 5 lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court include the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
The suit names as defendant the U.S. Department of State and Secretary Marco Rubio, blaming them for sending individuals to a country "internationally infamous for human rights abuses."
President Donald Trump's policy of sending undocumented immigrants to El Salvador has led to hundreds of deportations and lawsuits challenging individual decisions.
The lawsuit cites the Administrative Procedure Act, claiming the policy is not reasonable or adequately explained.
"It is arbitrary. It is capricious. It is contrary to law. And it was entered into without any legal basis," the lawsuit says.
"This case presents an extraordinary set of facts, but an ordinary application of blackletter APA law."
El Salvador prisons feature cruel treatment of prisoners, including torture and life-threatening prison conditions, the Department of State wrote in a 2023 report. Other reports say diseases like tuberculosis and scabies are widespread.
That didn't stop Trump's State Department from reaching an agreement with the country in February, under which individuals are sent to the country in exchange for fees. The U.S. paid $6 million to imprison about 300 alleged Venezuelan gang members earlier this year.
Plaintiffs include four nonprofits that represent immigrants in legal proceedings and to establish standing, say the agreement has impaired their ability to "carry out their core missions - including by making it more difficult for them to provide legal and other direct services to people who because of the agreement may be or in some cases already have been rendered to El Salvador."
The agreement violates the APA because it is contrary to law and constitutional right, the suit says. It violates Fifth Amendment protections of life, liberty or property without due process, it adds.
It also alleges the agreement violates the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, the Sixth Amendment guarantee of trial and the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
(T)he agreement ails to adequately address, and is irreconcilably at odds with, the State Department's own findings that CECOT and other prison facilities in El Salvador are replete with human rights abuses," the suit says.
