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Critics fear El Salvador becoming 'black hole' for US deportees

US President Donald Trump meets with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, April 14, 2025. [AFP]

Rights groups are increasingly worried that El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison is becoming a "black hole" for the United States to rid itself of expelled migrants or other unwanted people with no legal consequences.

A US senator who travelled to the Central American country Wednesday to try and retrieve a man wrongly deported and locked up there was sent away without even being able to speak to him.

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