On Thursday, activists in cities and towns across the US gathered on the birthday of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to show solidarity with the country's people and to demand an end to US deportations to El Salvador.
The event, called Out of CECOT—National Action to Bring our People Home, was planned prior to a recent release of more than 250 prisoners in Venezuela who were deported from the US. However, activists still gathered to protest against El Salvador's notorious prison serving as a deportation destination for deportees from the US and for Bukele's domestic crackdowns that some worry is inspiring authoritarianism in other countries.
In San Francisco, a small group of people gathered at the Salvadoran consulate and then in front of City Hall, holding signs reading: "Cut US Military Funding to El Salvador" and "El Salvador: End Bukele's state of exception" as well as multiple signs taped together with the names of migrants who had been sent to CECOT.
CECOT, a Spanish acronym for The Terrorism Confinement Centre, is a prison that was established under Bukele in 2023. The facility has widely criticised for hash conditions and alleged human rights abuses.
In February 2025, Bukele met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with the Salvadoran president offering to accept dangerous American criminals. Most of those sent to the facility from the US had not been criminally charged.
In June, US Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland introduced a bill to impose sanctions on El Salvador over its human rights record. Van Hollen had previously visited CECOT to see his constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported without charge.
"Putting people without any due process into their prisons, which has been going on since Bukele declared a state of exception, is a harbinger of what is happening here. The parallels are astounding and frightening," Theresa Cameranesi, a local activist, told The New Arab.
"We wanted to send a message to Bukele that this is not OK, and also to the Salvadoran people that their trauma is being noted, and it’s not being ignored," she added.
Savannah Landau, a regional organiser with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, who has worked as an election observer and has spoken with people who have been imprisoned in El Salvador, is also concerned over similarities she has seen between El Salvador and the US.
"In the last six years, we're seeing Bukele using the same tactics [US President Donald] Trump used—making people distrust the media, conspiracy theories. He's been showing for a long time his true colours," she told TNA.
For some, it has been the basic human suffering that triggered their activism. Laurie Stoerkel, a local activist who has been coordinating with women across the US, created a website called outofcecot.org.
"We saw the mothers [of the detained migrants on TV]. We all had the same reaction. I don't even have a word to describe the pain we saw. I started a website with women in other parts of the country," she told TNA. "I don't think the suffering and cruelty needs to be happening."
El Salvador is one of a growing number of countries that has agreed to take detainees who have been deported from the US, often without charges or having any connection to that country. Others include South Sudan, Kosova, Eswatini and Uzbekistan. This is in addition to the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which is being reactivated as a detention facility after years of dwindling numbers efforts to close that chapter of US history.