GOP photos at El Salvador prison evoke Abu Ghraib—and worse

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A row of Latino men with shaved heads and stoic expressions wearing identical white boxer shorts stand behind thick metal bars. In the back fellow prisoners sit cross-legged on large shelves that look like they’re meant for boxed furniture at IKEA, but are instead being used for humans. Outside the bars, free, is a white man in a blazer and collared shirt, his arm stretched out to hold the camera being used to take the photo of him and the men. The image is grotesque. And now it is history. 

If you’re not familiar with the names Riley Moore and Jason Smith, don’t worry; I wasn’t either until yesterday. They’re Republican Congressmen from West Virginia and Missouri, respectively, who took a trip to El Salvador on Tuesday where they were given a tour of Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a two-year old maximum security prison. Each posted photos to their social media pages after the visit, gloating about their access. 

I could continue describing them, but it’s probably best to see for yourself:

Photos like this are only possible when you’ve become so divorced from the humanity of others that they become nothing more than props in your political ploy.

But they weren’t alone in their casual disregard: A photo posted to X by the US Embassy in El Salvador confirmed an additional five House Republicans went along for the trip, including Claudia Tenney (NY), Mike Kennedy (UT), Carol Miller (WV), Ron Estes (KS) and Kevin Hern (OK). I’ve reached out to the offices of these members and so far Rep. Hern’s is the only one to respond, emailing me Thursday morning: “We cannot confirm or comment on the Congressman’s location for security purposes.”

These members at least had the sense not to brag about it on social media, but it also makes me wonder why? If visiting CECOT has become a Trump loyalty pilgrimage, why haven’t they blasted out thumbs up pics of their own? Is it enough for Trump just to know they went, or do Smith and Moore understand that you only truly get credit for your depravity if you broadcast it?

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, had a very different experience when he arrived in El Salvador Wednesday morning to check in on one of his constituents who was wrongfully and illegally imprisoned there beginning in March. He met with the country’s Vice President and asked if he could visit CECOT to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia: In a press conference later that day, he revealed he was told no. He also said the embassy told him they hadn’t received any direction from the administration to facilitate Garcia’s return, despite a court order.

The visit by Republican members of Congress and Van Hollen’s subsequent rejection the very next day show that CECOT isn’t a prison holding Americans, but a place for Trump to hold his political prisoners—and where only his allies can wander and gawk. Some have compared the prison’s conditions to Nazi concentration camps.

Garcia’s story has horrified the nation and the world as a husband and father who was in the US legally was abducted and sent to CECOT. The Trump administration has conceded he was sent due to an “administrative error” and that there is no actual evidence of Garcia being connected to a gang or any sort of crime. But in true Trump fashion, instead of taking the loss and bringing Garcia home, they’ve only escalated the attacks and dishonesty.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stood behind her podium and lied to the press on Tuesday, saying Garcia was engaged in “human trafficking” and referring to him as a “foreign terrorist.” There is zero evidence of either of those claims. But Garcia was not born in the US and therefore, to this white nationalist administration, is expendable. And the longer he stays locked up and away from people like Van Hollen who might help him, the lore has space to grow.

Notably none of the photos from Moore and Smith featured Garcia, despite the fact that he’s the facility’s most well-known detainee. It’s unclear whether the delegation met him on their visit, or even attempted to check on his status. After all, there’s no time for substance on a trip that’s the platonic ideal of “doing it for the selfie.” 

The concept of a photo shoot at CECOT originated in late March with the Secretary of Homeland Security herself, Kristi Noem. The media-obsessed Trump lieutenant visited the Salvadoran prison with a full camera crew to document her jaunt. In a video message posted to social media, Noem issued a threat to immigrants.

“First of all, do not come to our country illegally,” she said, clad in an ICE baseball cap, hair extensions and a $50,000 Rolex. “You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

It remains unclear which crimes, if any, the men sent from the US to El Salvador has committed.

“The Department of Homeland Security secretary’s visit is an example of the fear that Trump’s government wants to instill in immigrants,” an attorney for a human rights organization in El Salvador told The Guardian at the time. “This is precisely what Noem has done — use the CECOT as a cinematographic space.”

Amnesty International released a statement condemning the March abduction of 238 men from the US to El Salvador and warned of the dangers of CECOT. “Reports indicate extreme overcrowding, lack of access to adequate medical care, and widespread ill-treatment amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Additionally, Salvadoran organizations have reported more than 300 deaths of individuals while in state custody, some of them showing clear signs of violence.”

But it wasn’t enough to dissuade the congressmen from using taxpayer money for their voyeuristic voyage. 

Once the congressmen’s photos from CECOT went viral, many drew comparisons to the prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib and subsequent photos released during the Bush administration’s War on Terror. For those who don’t recall, the images first published by CBS News in 2004 show US military police posing and smiling in front of Iraqi prisoners who they’d been abusing and humiliating. In one photo, a GI makes a thumbs up while pointing at naked prisoners with bags over their heads; Rep. Moore’s thumbs up at CECOT had disturbing echoes.

But to the eye of Wesley Morgan, a freelance journalist who covered the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and author of The Hardest Place, there are fundamental differences between the situations that make the comparison not entirely apt.

“When US soldiers posed with prisoners at Abu Ghraib, they did so with the expectation that no one outside their unit would ever see those photos—they knew they were committing a crime for which they would likely be held accountable if the photos got out,” Morgan told me Wednesday. “It was not intended for public consumption.” Whereas the photos posted by the Congressmen are “being posted straight to social media, unabashedly.”

Historian Joe Stieb pointed out another crucial difference: the way Republicans are engaging with the content. “I don't recall outright celebrations of Abu Ghraib on the right, like we are seeing now with the selfies being taken in front of [CECOT] prisoners.” (One of the exceptions, Stieb pointed out, was the late Rush Limbaugh.)

There’s a reflex to compare the current horrors to historic examples like the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps, chattel slavery, and the Jim Crow South. These influences are evident in this cruel administration, and it’s impossible to sever the past from the present. But looking forward I think it’s also important to understand that what we’re facing now is a Frankenstein’s Monster of all past atrocities with a distinctly modern sheen—the likes of which we haven’t necessarily seen before. 

Comparing our current situation to the past may be comforting to some because we know those examples were ultimately resolved in some way, however imperfect. But it’s impossible to know where we are currently on the historical timeline and how much worse things could get—and that’s terrifying.

What we do know is that Republicans are flying to a foreign country so they can snap photos inside a brutal prison in order to prove their loyalty to the President of the United States. And that paints a pretty ugly picture.