Navigating Legal Complexities: Torture and Deportation in U.S. Law

The U.S. has sent people it has detained — people it calls terrorists — to a prison overseas — indefinitely.

This is true in 2025, after the Trump administration deported at least 261 foreign nationals to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

And it was also true two decades ago, following the attacks of Sept. 11, after the U.S. government began to house captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the military prison at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

During the George W. Bush administration, John Yoo wrote the legal justification for the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, now widely referred to as "the torture memos."

Yoo argues that there are key legal differences between what the Bush administration did – and what the Trump administration is attempting in El Salvador.

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