Extraordinary times call for extraordinary and strong language. President Trump’s plan to have migrants — and potentially U.S. citizens — rounded up, flown to El Salvador, and confined there in a maximum security facility that specializes in indefinite detention meets that bar. However, even when news coverage and criticism has acknowledged Trump’s vision is almost certainly illegal and unquestionably dangerous, it has often used fairly normal terminology and referred to the flights as deportations to a “prison.” That is not what is happening. President Trump is sending people to the camps.

The distinction comes from some of the unique features of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the infamous El Salvadoran facility that is holding people on behalf of the Trump administration. A “prison” is most typically defined as an institution holding inmates who have been sentenced for a crime. And, of course, most sentences have an end date. However, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and his government have boasted that people placed in CECOT, “have no chance of getting out.”

Because of the prospect of indefinite detention and the lack of due process the Trump administration has afforded the people it has sent to CECOT, experts who spoke to TPM said the facility could be more accurately described as a “concentration camp,” “penal colony,” or “permanent prison camp.”

Dr. Sandra Susan Smith, who is the Daniel … Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice at Harvard’s Kennedy School, was very clear on this point in an email.

“More than a prison, El Salvador’s CECOT has many if not all the hallmarks of a concentration camp,” Smith wrote. “The Trump administration has unlawfully deported a group it finds highly undesirable — migrants largely from Venezuela — to CECOT, a facility known for its utter brutality and unyielding inhumanity that is located in a foreign country where US courts have no jurisdiction. Further, they have done so with no evidentiary basis for claims of migrants’ criminality and with no due process.”

Smith’s point might sound extreme since the term “concentration camp” is most closely associated with the German Nazi regime that left millions dead. However, mass executions are actually not part of the official definition. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.”

Mike Wessler, the communications director of the Prison Policy Initiative, said he and his team were “discussing” whether CECOT should be called a “prison” this morning or whether another term should be applied. He pointed to the Holocaust Encyclopedia definition of “concentration camp.”

“I think there is a strong case to be made that the term prison does not fit for these sorts of facilities. Prisons are generally considered part of a larger legal system that is subject to judicial oversight and has somewhat defined processes, including around sentences, conditions, and releases,” Wessler said.

Wessler went on to allude to the fact that Trump has brushed aside multiple court rulings to continue with his detention scheme. The Trump administration has used a 19th Century law, the Alien Enemies Act, as justification for sending the migrants to CECOT. That rationale has faced legal challenges and, in March, when the first flights to El Salvador were taking off, a federal judge ordered them to be halted. The planes kept going in apparent defiance of that order and, earlier today, a judge found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt for defying court orders against the removals.

Along with the administration’s blowing past court orders, there are legal concerns surrounding the lack of due process afforded the migrants who were flown to El Salvador.

Keri Blakinger, an LA Times reporter and author who has covered jails and prisons, pointed to this pile of legal concerns in a phone conversation with TPM where she said people were using the “wrong words” to describe the situation.

“When you’re looking at something like CECOT, I think calling it a prison implies there’s due process, and implies that there’s an end in sight, or an outdate, or any of that,” Blakinger said. “When we call them extraditions, I think that wrongly implies that there’s a due process.”

Blakinger suggested the situation “is not a thing that we have a word for.”

“I mean, I suppose concentration camp would come the closest, but when I think of concentration camp personally, I also think of it as being a thing that doesn’t last forever,” she said. “In some ways it feels more like a penal colony. … That also, I think, has the implication of the indefinite or permanent nature of the placement.”

Bukele’s office did not respond to requests for comment on this story. CECOT has been part of the El Salvadoran president’s extraordinary response to the crime and gang violence that plagued his country for decades. Bukele, who first took office in 2019, began a Regimen of Exception, or state of emergency, three years later. During that time, his forces have detained over 80,000 people while activists have raised concerns about alleged human rights violations and repression. For his part, Bukele has credited the aggressive regime with bringing a new era of safety to the country.

Antonio Palacios is the director of communications for Soccorro Juridico Humanitario, an El Salvadoran organization that provides free legal services to citizens who have not been involved in gang activity. In a conversation with TPM on Wednesday morning, Palacios suggested CECOT is actually a better destination than many of the other facilities in the country’s prison system.

“CECOT has distinct qualities from the other jails, for example, it has better sanitary conditions, better infrastructure, better protocols for meals, et cetera,” Palacios explained in Spanish. “The people who are in CECOT are 1,000 times better than the ones in other jails like Mariona and Izalco.”

Palacios also said “99.5 percent” of the inmates in CECOT have indeed received lengthy sentences for gang activity. He contrasted this with other institutions in El Salvador where people have been detained “arbitrarily.”

Bukele, who has notoriously described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator,” has promoted CECOT in a series of splashy social media videos. Palacios suggested this is part of a deliberate strategy.

“CECOT shows an exemplary model of a prison that Bukele wants the world to see, but in general, our penal system is not like CECOT,” Palacios said. “In the other jails, we have tortures and violent deaths,”

Palacios’ organization has tracked over 390 deaths in the country’s prisons, he told TPM. Inmates in other prisons have reported cramped conditions, a lack of access to bathing, and “every type of inhuman treatment” including “torture, beatings, deprivation of food, and medicine.”

“What inmates recount is that these prisons are practically hell on earth,” he said.

While Palacios said, unlike elsewhere in El Salvador, the majority of those in CECOT have received sentences and some form of due process, he noted some there have not. And, Palacios argued those brought in from America are now adding to those ranks and exacerbating the situation.

“Many people, many innocent people, who are going to get sent to CECOT probably if things keep going like this will never get out,” Palacios said. “Now with these deportations, it’s not only open to gang members — there will be innocent people.”

Palacios said he would describe CECOT as a “permanent prison camp” rather than a “concentration camp.” However, he noted the number of people there who have not been sentenced is causing a “problem” with that distinction. He also was adamant that El Salvador is certainly home to facilities that fit the definition.

“I feel like there are real concentration camps. The other prisons, for example Mariona, Izalco, Apanteos … you could certainly describe as concentration camps,” Palacios said.

TPM emailed the White House press office to ask how it would respond to the characterization of the El Salvadoran prison where Trump is sending people being described as a “concentration camp.” Additionally, we asked for evidence that the people who have been sent there, particularly Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a man the government admits was flown to CECOT mistakenly, have links to gangs or terrorist activity. White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai referred us to Wednesday afternoon’s press briefing where Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described Abrego Garcia as “an illegal criminal foreign terrorist gang member” who was allegedly involved in “two instances of domestic violence.”

After attacking Democrats and others who have criticized the detention plan as focused on “bringing back this illegal alien terrorist,” Leavitt invited a woman to the podium whose daughter was killed by an undocumented migrant. Following the grieving mother’s remarks, Leavitt solicited questions from the assembled reporters. However, despite that invitation, there would be no further discussion about the detention plan — or anything else — today.

“I have a question,” said someone in the briefing room.

The press secretary offered a terse response before turning around and leaving the room.

“No,” Leavitt replied.