Here's a question I've been asking myself.

As I watch U.S. courts try to figure out what to do, about 238 men who got shipped

off to El Salvador without so much as a hearing.

Is the U.S. just doing black sites now?

So I called up Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration over at The New Yorker,

and I put this question to him.

I don't think that's an exaggeration.

Little refresher here.

A black site is defined as a clandestine detention center for prisoners who are being held without due process.

The U.S. is accusing people of a crime, or not even a crime specifically, of an identity that they are not presented with evidence of

and that they're not allowed to contest.

And then they're being summarily sent to a place in El Salvador where, yes, they are effectively being held in a black site.

So, you know, I don't think, I don't think your formulation is off the mark.

I think it's exactly what's happening.

The Salvadoran detention facility that's received these people has been called a mega prison.

It's known as Seacot.

Seacot is the acronym for what in Spanish translates to the center for the confinement of terrorism. And this is a prison that was built in the middle of this so-called state of exception because the Salvadoran government was

arresting so many people, they needed more jail space. You know, it is a black hole for certain.

I mean, there's just, there is no entry point for people from the outside.

The strange thing about the fact that it seems like the Trump administration is operating this

black site in El Salvador is that I think of black sites as things you want to keep secret and don't talk about.

And this administration is doing the opposite of that.

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