Although U.S. presidents have often made controversial—and sometimes arguably unlawful—decisions about which countries and security forces to give security assistance to, they typically have not offered it for the stated purpose of carrying out gross violations of human rights. But with a payment to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, President Trump appears to have hired a foreign country’s government to arbitrarily detain hundreds of men. In other words, he appears to have hired another government to implement their prolonged detention without charges and trial—an act defined in U.S. law as a “gross violation of internationally recognized human rights.”. Every year, the U.S. sends billions of dollars in arms and other types of security assistance to its allies and partners around the world. But that assistance comes with statutory restrictions passed by Congress, and some of those laws prohibit U.S. assistance from going to foreign forces in response to their misconduct, like when they have committed gross violations of human rights. Although the executive branch has had an inconsistent track record of applying these laws—with weak oversight and follow-up from Congress when violations are alleged and reluctance from federal courts to intervene—the statutes generally still serve as a safeguard against U.S. government assistance enabling such violations abroad. But, setting aside the many other important legal issues at play here, President Trump’s payment to another country invites the question of how such a scheme could be legally possible. And the answer appears to be found in the various loopholes that exist in relevant U.S. statutes, which have provided a pathway for the use of U.S. security assistance for the explicit purpose of imprisoning hundreds of people in prolonged detention without charges or trial. Congress should act to fix them.
Crossing the Rubicon: U.S. Government Cash for Human Rights Violations | Lawfare
