The US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is due to visit a controversial prison in El Salvador, to which US officials sent 238 Venezuelans.
The Trump Administration alleges that the men are members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and had them deported to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
The move has prompted an outcry in the US and Venezuela, with several family members of the deportees insisting their relatives do not belong to any gang.
Noem’s visit to the country, and to the jail known as Terrorism Confinement Centre (Cecot) in particular, is seen as a show of support for Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, as pressure against housing deportees at the prison grows.
As part of her visit, Noem is due to meet Bukele, who had the mega-jail built as part of his own crackdown on gang crime in El Salvador.
President Bukele made the offer to incarcerate deportees and prisoners from the US at the Cecot during a recent visit to the Central American nation by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio described the move as “an unprecedented offer of friendship” but human rights activists have warned that the jail, in which inmates are held in windowless cells and sleep on bare metal bunks, is a “concrete and steel pit”.
The deportation of 238 Venezuelans to the Cecot earlier this month has also put the Trump Administration into open conflict with a federal judge, James Boasberg, for the use of a centuries-old law to justify their quick deportation.
President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport the Venezuelans without due process in the US, saying it had removed “bad people from our country”.
The White House subsequently also said that those deported had been carefully vetted.
However, several of their family members in Venezuela say their loved ones had no prior convictions.
Judge Boasberg has since imposed an injunction on further deportations which use the centuries-old law as a justification for people’s removal from the US.
The fate of the Venezuelans has also come under severe criticism by a Washington Court of Appeals judge who said that even “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act”.
The comparison prompted a furious reaction from senior officials in the Trump Administration.
Meanwhile, lawyers in El Salvador, apparently acting in coordination with the Venezuelan government, have lodged a petition with the Salvadorean Supreme Court to try to secure the immediate release of the men.
The latest deportations under Trump’s second term are part of the president’s long-running campaign against illegal immigration in the US.
In January, Trump signed an executive order declaring Tren de Aragua and MS-13 foreign terrorist organisations.
He won over voters on the campaign trail, in part, by promising to enact the largest deportation operation in US history.
While irregular border crossings have plummeted to the lowest number in decades since Trump took office, the Republican president has reportedly been frustrated by the relatively slow pace of deportations so far.
