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By Nelson Renteria and Sarah Kinosian
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Lawyers challenging the incarceration in El Salvador of more than 200 Venezuelans deported by the U.S. said the Salvadoran government is denying the prisoners access to attorneys and contact with the outside world.
Under an agreement with the Salvadoran government, President Donald Trump's administration in March sent 238 Venezuelans to its Terrorism Confinement Center, the largest prison in Latin America, as part of a crackdown on immigration.
The lawyers said they have not been able to visit, speak to or learn about the whereabouts and conditions of their clients, whose identities they have gleaned through leaked information.
El Salvador's presidency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. President Nayib Bukele visited the White House on Monday.
Private attorneys, some recruited by the Venezuelan government and all paid for by families, have filed writs of habeus corpus at El Salvador's supreme court, seeking to compel the government to justify the deported Venezuelans' detention or release them.
Law firm Grupo Ortega, which represents at least 30 of the Venezuelan deportees, has received no response to any of those petitions, said general director Jaime Ortega.
"None of these people have committed a crime in El Salvador," Ortega told Reuters. "If they are foreigners and people who have lived in other countries, why have they come here directly to a penitentiary center?"
Rights groups and foreign governments, including the United States, have for years said El Salvador lacks an independent judiciary, and the supreme court has not taken any steps to consider the habeus corpus petitions to date.
Human Rights Watch on Friday said there is no official list of the detained Venezuelans, and relatives have not received responses to requests for information on their location from Salvadoran and U.S. authorities.
The rights group called on the Salvadoran government to confirm who is being held and where, reveal any legal basis for their detention and allow them contact with the outside world.
Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal is preparing habeas corpus claims for more than 100 Venezuelans, but Director Noah Bullock is not optimistic about the outcome.
The group has filed over 7,200 unanswered habeas corpus claims for Salvadorans arrested under Bukele.
Bukele came to power in 2019 on promises he would combat the country's notorious gangs and crime rate. Since then his party has acted in congress to remove the attorney general and all five supreme court judges, replacing them with loyalists.
The president declared a state of emergency about two years ago that he said was needed to implement the crackdown. Salvadoran authorities have since detained around 2% of the adult population and the homicide rate has dropped significantly.
The moves have drawn widespread criticism, including by the United states, over the suspension of constitutional rights like due process and the right to a lawyer, as well as over reports of arbitrary detention, torture and death.
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria in San Salvador, Sarah Kinosian in Mexico City; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
