Many people are being deported to different places based on the Trump administration’s choice, with one location being CECOT.
On December 21, 2025, a documentary on the Salvadoran prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) was supposed to broadcast on the CBS network. But a day early, the documentary was pulled back before it could be aired in the United States, but miscommunication led the documentary to be aired in CBS, Canada.
This documentary raised controversy as it revealed the inner mechanisms of CECOT and what life was like for those in the prison. Harsh environments inmates faced on the daily were put on full display, revealing Venezuelan men’s lifestyle after being deported.
The Trump administration pulled back the documentary due to a lack of input from them. Trump wrote on social media:
“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!”
The infamous prison is a maximum security prison built in late 2022 to crack down on a large scale of gang members in El Salvador. However, the U.S. The Department of State in 2022 filed a report on CECOTs human rights abuses, with many inmates treated in harsh conditions, such as being cramped, a lack of outside time, and contact with anyone outside the prison. Such reports also highlighted more than 200 deaths within the prison.
One of the inmates who was released after finding no connection to the Venezuelan gang, later interviewed by NPR, was 32-year-old Andry Hernandez. He spoke about his experience in the CECOT prison, saying,
“CECOT was hell on Earth,”
After Trump deported Venezuelan men and even a few American citizens, CBS had worked on the documentary to cover the story on time from the prison. But the day before it could be aired, it was pulled with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss stating,
“This is 60 Minutes. We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera.”
Despite the documentary being ready to air and going through all the proper channels to get greenlit. This led to backlash and accusations that the documentary didn’t meet the Trump administration’s standards. Since the administration has sued news stations, including CBS, for covering certain news. In this case, the documentary put on display exactly where Trump was sending these people into harsh conditions, with many of the interviews describing CECOT as a terrible place.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating or vomiting on themselves,” stated an inmate
In the end, the documentary was released in January 2026. Though it still has some backlash due to many people saying that certain parts of the documentary had been cut from the original air, which downplayed how harsh the living conditions are in CECOT, despite the prison being similar to a concentration camp.
Written by Mauricio Hernandez G, staff writer