Dramatic video shows ‘MS-13 and Tren de Aragua murderers and pedos’ rough arrival at El Salvador megajail

A dramatic new video shows how alleged MS-13 and Tren de Aragua murderers and pedophiles are treated upon arrival at El Salvador’s mega-jail. 

The Central American country’s president, Nayib Bukele, shared the clip on X to exhibit the latest ‘joint military operation with out allies from the United States’. 

Bukele said the clip showed the transfer of ’17 extremely dangerous criminals linked to Tren de Aragua and MS-13′ to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). 

‘All individuals are confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists,’ he wrote in a caption beside the video. 

‘This operation is another step in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.’

The minute-long video shows troops escorting the prisoners from a huge plane on the runway at night, forcing them to run in handcuffs before loading them into a car. 

Officials at the jail facility then roughly push their heads forward and shave their scalps before grabbing them by the neck and leading them to their cells. 

The prisoners can be seen wearing all-white with their arms chained behind their backs as they’re rammed together in a tiny jail cell. 

The mega-prison is the crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy. 

The bleak facility, which bans all visitation, recreation and education, became the latest tool in US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration this month, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were transferred there.

Immigrants who are accused by the US of being members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang began arriving under an agreement between Trump and Bukele. 

The US government has agreed to pay Bukele’s administration $6 million for one year of services at the facility.  

Bukele has made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. 

He ordered the building of the CECOT mega-prison as he began his campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. 

It opened a year later in the town of Tecoluca, about 45 miles east of the capital.

The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

Bukele’s justice minister has said that those held at CECOT would never return to their communities.

The government doesn’t regularly update the figure, but the human rights organization Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had 110,000 people behind bars, including those sentenced to prison and those still awaiting trial. 

That’s more than double the 36,000 inmates that the government reported in April 2021, a year before Bukele ramped up his fight against crime.

Cristosal and other advocates have accused authorities of human rights violations.

Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador’s prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited cases of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.

In slickly produced videos, the government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.

The migrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law requires a president to declare the U.S. is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. 

Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the U.S. in invoking the wartime authority.

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.

The Trump administration has not identified the migrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the U.S.

In one horrific case, a makeup artist seeking asylum in the US after fleeing Venezuela claimed he was wrongly identified as a gang member and sent to the hellhole prison.

Andrys Hernandez, 31, crossed the border into California from Tijuana last year to escape persecution for his homosexuality, his lawyers said.

He waited months in detention for an immigration court hearing on March 13, but instead was put one of three planes with 237 other migrants and deported.

But Hernandez was not sent back to Venezuela. Instead he was flown to El Salvador and detained at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

He and the others on board are accused by the Trump Administration of being members of Tren de Aragua, a fearsome Venezuelan gang active in the US.

However, 137 of them were deported without due process under an obscure 1798 law not used since World War II, and many of their families claim they are not gang members.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump Administration was ‘not going to reveal operational details about a counterterrorism operation’ when asked about the evidence that detainees were actually gang members.

Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said Hernandez was one of many falsely accused because of his tattoos.

‘His tattoos are benign. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is Tren de Aragua,’ she said.

‘His attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.’

Photos of Hernandez showed he has a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his left forearm and what appears to be a floral design around his elbow.

His lawyers called them tattoos that you might see on any arts student at a café in New York or Los Angeles.

Lawyers for another migrant shipped off to El Salvador said his tattoo that ICE claimed was Tren de Aragua was actually the Real Madrid soccer team logo.

The Department of Homeland Security in that case alleged other evidence confirmed his membership of the gang.

ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com requests for comment on Hernandez’s case.