Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visits El Salvador prison where deported Venezuelans are held

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit. Noem’s trip to the prison — where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside — comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.” The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while human rights activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses. At the prison, Noem toured an area holding some of the Venezuelans accused of being gang members. In the sweltering building, the men in white T-shirts and shorts stared silently from their cell without making a sound. When Noem exited the building, the men could be heard shouting an indiscernible chant. In a cell block holding Salvadoran prisoners, about a dozen were lined up by guards near the front of their cell and told to remove their T-shirts and face masks. The men were heavily tattooed, some bearing the letters MS, for the Mara Salvatrucha gang, on their chests.