Congressman Riley Moore visited a maximum security prison in El Salvador where some people deported from the United States are being held and posted photos on social media, including one of Moore giving a thumbs up sign.
“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore, a Republican who represents West Virginia’s northern counties, wrote on social media.
The facility that Moore visited is known as CECOT, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo.
I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador. This maximum security facility houses the country’s most brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists. Several inmates were extremely violent criminals recently deported from the U.S.
I leave now even… pic.twitter.com/zhO8i2IbOd
— Rep. Riley M. Moore (@RepRileyMoore) April 15, 2025
The Trump administration has a $6 million agreement with El Salvador’s government to send some people deported from the United States to The Terrorism Confinement Center.
Hundreds of the immigrants deported from the United States to the maximum security prison were alleged to be to be members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.
The Trump administration has not identified the migrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. Some were determined to be gang members because of their tattoos of crowns, a clock and other symbols
Among the deported people being held at the prison is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker and father-of-three from Maryland, who was removed from the United States through an “administrative error.”
Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record in the United States or anywhere else, denies an allegation of gang membership.
Ábrego García came to the United States from El Salvador illegally around 2011, fleeing threats from a violent gang known as Barrio 18 toward his family.
He has been accused of being a member of a violent Salvadoran gang, MS-13. That allegation comes from a 2019 removal proceeding and allegedly based on his apparel of a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie along with a Gang Field Interview Sheet entered by a detective who was later suspended.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling, directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States.
Congressman Moore posted shortly after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday that he had just toured CECOT. The photos that he posted appeared to include images of cells packed with prisoners.
“This maximum security facility houses the country’s most brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists. Several inmates were extremely violent criminals recently deported from the U.S.,” Moore wrote.
On Moore’s Facebook page, the congressman received a torrent of criticism as well as some praise.
Among those who commented was Jill Upson, West Virginia’s executive director of the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs and the executive director of the West Virginia Women’s Commission.
“Thank you, Congressman Moore,” Upson wrote, “for standing up for the victims of violent crime.”