To Rep. Mike Kennedy, who travelled to CECOT prison, and the rest of our Utah legislators: Remember that the government of El Salvador is a dictatorship. You can’t trust that everyone in that prison is truly as bad as President Nayib Bukele says. You know very well that if they got a trial, it was not a fair trial in ways with which we are familiar.
The USA should not be involved with a dictatorship like this; i.e., one that builds human rights violation centers and houses people without any access to anyone from the outside. There is no accountability for what happens to those people.
The whole situation is incompatible with fundamental American values — two of those values being the right to due process, and no cruel and unusual punishment.
We should never, ever be in the business of shipping people off to gulags. It is imperative that we demonstrate to the world what a fair justice system looks like. Please do your job and help us to be that role model.
Jennifer Long-Pratt, Salt Lake City
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