‘We don’t know how any of this will play out’: what’s next for US deportees in El Salvador

Political scientist Mneesha Gellman on the deportees' fates, dire prison conditions and Bukele-Trump parallels

The Trump administration has flown 238 Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.

Despite a judge's order temporarily blocking the move, the US government flew more than 200 men that it had accused of gang membership to the Terrorism Confinement Center", or Cecot - a draconian mega-prison that has become central to the promise of the Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, promise to rid his country of crime.