BONUS: Inside El Salvador's CECOT Prison for MS-13 Gang Members, plus Stopping China from Having Control of the Panama Canal
In this bonus episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz: El Salvador’s CECOT Mega-Prison for Gang Members Senator Cruz describes his recent visit to El Salvador, where he toured the CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo) prison. The prison was built to house up to 40,000 of the country’s most dangerous gang members (MS-13, Barrio 18). Conditions: Cells hold 100 prisoners each, with bunk beds stacked four levels high. Prisoners are locked in cells 23 hours a day, with 1 hour allowed for exercise and religious instruction (both mandatory). No cellphones—blocked with jammers, with heavy fines for carriers if a call gets through. Monitored constantly by guards with machine guns and 24/7 lighting. Cruz compares it to U.S. prisons, noting it is much harsher and more controlled. He highlights the dramatic drop in El Salvador’s homicide rate (down ~98%), attributing it to President Bukele’s crackdown and mass incarceration of gang members. He even interviews an MS-13 member from Texas who admitted to murder in El Salvador and hinted at crimes in the U.S. The inmate expressed regret about his son possibly joining a gang but acknowledged that El Salvador’s new security situation made that less likely. 2. Panama Canal and Chinese Influence Cruz also traveled to Panama, where he toured the Panama Canal and met with government officials. He emphasizes Panama’s strategic importance to U.S. national security and commerce. Concerns raised: Chinese companies control key infrastructure near the canal, including ports, a bridge under construction, and a metro tunnel project. Cruz warns this could give China leverage to disrupt U.S. military and commercial shipping if conflict arises (e.g., over Taiwan). He pressed Panamanian officials to remove Chinese control and noted ongoing negotiations to transfer two Chinese-run ports to a U.S. consortium. He frames this as a matter of U.S.–Panama shared interest: Panama also risks economic and security harm if China can choke canal operations. Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson and The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
And it's really nice to have you with us wherever you are around the country.
We have got a lot to chat about on today's show as you, Senator, have been on a CODEL in Latin America.
Well, that's exactly right.
I left several days ago, spent two days in El Salvador, and then went to Panama and went and toured the Panama Canal in El Salvador.
I sat down with the president of El Salvador, President Bukele, had a one-on-one meeting with him.
The results he has produced are extraordinary.
We talked about that on Wednesday's podcast, how El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate on planet Earth of 100 murders per 100,000 people to the murder rate plummeting 98%.
Last year, the murder rate was 1.9 murders per 100,000 people, making it one of the safest countries on earth and indeed significantly safer than the United States.
That result is extraordinary.
And what I did this week is I actually toured the Seacot Prison, the prison where El Salvador is putting MS-13 and Barrio 18 gang members.
It was astonishing.
I'm going to bring you inside that prison.
I'm going to tell you exactly what I saw.
I also spent a day and a half in Panama meeting with senior government officials in Panama and went and toured the Panama Canal, saw firsthand how the Panama Canal operates and saw one of the two Chinese ports that is right at the Pacific mouth of the Panama Canal.
I'm going to tell you what I saw on the ground and what the real threat is to American national security and American commerce from China having a decisive position on the Panama Canal.
All of that we're going to bring inside.
Yeah, it's really incredible.
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All right.
So, Senator, let's start with the big part of your trip.
You mentioned it a moment ago.
You actually went in and saw the prison that everybody's been talking about.
Well, I did.
The Stecot prison, El Salvador built to house the very worst gang members.
It's a maximum security prison.
It has the capacity of 40,000 prisoners, and they built it with that capacity because that was their estimate of the gang members that they were looking at that they wanted to incapacitate.
I drove from the capital city, San Salvador.
It is 45 minutes to an hour to get to the prison.
I drove to the prison.
One of the things that is striking, as you're pulling up to the prison, they instruct you, turn your cell phone off, put it on airplane mode.
And the reason is there are no cell phones, and in fact, they have jammers in the prison.
And so, unlike most prisons, if not every prison on the planet, where prisoners frequently smuggle in cell phones, often with the complicity of prison guards, at the Seacott prison, there are no cell phones.
The cell phones are jammed.
And in fact, what the El Salvador's government has done is imposed massive fines on the cell phone companies if even a single call goes through from the prison.
And so the cell phone companies to avoid, and the fines, if I remember correctly, what the justice minister said to me, it is $100,000 per violation.
So it can rack up very, very quickly.
10 calls is a million bucks, which means the cell phone companies don't want a single call coming out of that prison.
And as a result, the prison is totally locked down.
So we drove.
You hear something like that, by the way, and you sit there and you're like, wait, why aren't we doing that here, right?
Like, why aren't we doing things like this to make prison not like an easy place and to make sure that exactly you just mentioned this stuff doesn't happen in America?
I love when you hear other ideas from other countries like this.
Yeah, I have to admit, I thought about the cell phone blockers, and I've been supportive of legislation to increase the punishment for having a cell phone in U.S. prisons because you end up having gangs and drugs and many of the worst criminals in America are operating out of prisons and are inflicting enormous violence on civilian populations outside of prison.
And so that's certainly a lesson I think we can learn in terms of how to be more effective shutting off the means of communication.
So you go from there, you see this, and then what happens next?
All right.
So you drive up to, first of all, a massive steel gate and concrete walls, concrete walls that go up, I'd say about 30 feet.
And then on top of the concrete walls is barbed wire.
And then on top of the barbed wire is electrified wire.
So it's an imposing front entrance that you come to it.
You then go through these giant steel doors.
You go through a second set of giant steel doors.
You go in.
It's very much at this prison like an airlock, where you go in.
We were in a bus and we got out of the bus.
And we went in where they require every prison guard every day to go through.
And they go through a metal detector.
It's very much like going into an airport where you go through a metal detector, you scan any bag you have with you, and then they have a scanner, an x-ray machine designed to find things that are even within body cavities if you've ingested anything.
I mean, it was impressive technology that every guard is required to go through every day when they walk in.
I will say they didn't make me go through those scans, so I guess that there are some benefits to being part of the United States government.
I was there with the justice minister who was giving me the tour himself, so I guess they were not terribly worried about my having swallowed balloons with heroin in them or having a shank concealed somewhere.
I had neither, but I was glad that they did not check.
So I went into the main prison and you drive and you have a whole series.
There's a gate, there's another gate, there's another gate, and there are walls.
It's a little bit like the opening of Get Smart where you go through gate after gate after gate.
It's a whole series of walls and barbed wire.
And I mean, it's imposing.
I mean, it is designed so there ain't nobody getting out.
And I asked them if they had anyone escape.
They said, never had anyone escape.
I believe them.
And I believe them because what I saw then, I've never seen anything like this.
So they have eight units that are built.
Each of the units is designed to house 5,000 prisoners.
That's why the capacity is 40,000 prisoners.
They're at about 50% capacity right now.
They're just under 20,000 prisoners that are there right now.
So I went into one of the eight units.
In that unit, they have a series of massive cells.
Each of the cells holds 100 prisoners.
Now, the cells that hold 100 prisoners, they have four sets of long bunk beds that go up four levels high.
So these cells are, I don't know, probably 30 feet up in the air.
I mean, in terms of height, they're high cells, and they have these bunk beds.
The bunk beds are made out of stainless steel.
So the prisoners, you walk in and you see 100 prisoners sitting on these bunk beds.
And these bunk beds are stainless steel.
There are no sheets.
There are no blankets.
There are no pillows.
It is 100 prisoners.
They're dressed in white.
They're dressed in white, kind of loose-fitting shorts and t-shirts.
And they are sitting there on these bunk beds, four levels up.
So the fourth level up is, I don't know, it's north of 20 feet up.
I mean, you have to climb up a ladder to get on it.
And so you just see 100 prisoners.
And you have to envision almost all of these.
So they're all adults.
This prison does not have any juveniles.
No one under 18 is there.
And there are no women there.
So these are all men.
And they're overwhelmingly young men.
I would say they're overwhelmingly 18 to 35.
And they're all gang members.
And there's no subtlety about this.
In fact, at one point in one of the cells, they had the prisoners come forward.
They instructed them, remove their t-shirts.
And you could see them remove their t-shirts.
And all of them had gang tattoos on them.
And it wasn't subtle.
It was a giant MS-13 like across their chest.
I mean, it's not.
They're proud of it, Barbara.
It's a right of press because they're not trying to hide it.
It was, there was no ambiguity.
And the prisoners, 23 hours a day, they are in those cells.
And in front of the cells are prison guards.
And the prison guards are standing there holding machine guns, watching them through the front of the bars.
Above the prison cell is there's a whole level above the prison cell, and it's basically bars on top as well.
And so there are prison guards on top of the prison cell looking down on them.
So unlike, you know, you and I have both seen a lot of prison movies where people are off in dark corners and doing things in their cells where they can't be seen.
Sure.
These prisoners are being monitored constantly.
The lights are on 24 hours a day.
They do not turn the lights off.
And they have prison guards with machine guns watching them 24 hours a day.
They allow the prisoners out of their cells for an hour a day.
And they allow them in small groups of about 20, so it's not very many.
And the small groups come out and they do 30 minutes of calisthenics.
The calisthenics are led by a prison employee.
So they don't have weight equipment or anything else, but they're doing kind of stretches and jumping jacks and various calisthenics.
And then they have 30 minutes of religious instruction.
And I asked, I said, okay, are those optional or mandatory?
They said, no, they're mandatory.
And so other than that one hour, the remaining 23 hours a day, they're in that cell.
And I will tell you, I asked the justice minister, I asked the head of the prison who was also with me and giving me the tour.
I said, you know, I asked, all right, how much violence do you have?
The answer was essentially none.
And you could see it.
I mean, given that the prison guards are watching.
Is there afraid of the consequences?
Explain the logic behind the reason why there's virtually none.
Look, I don't know.
I'm just telling you what they told me.
I asked about prison rape.
Look, tragically, in virtually every prison on earth, rape is a significant risk.
It happens with far too common frequency.
They said it didn't happen there, that they did not deal with prison rape.
And I don't know that I entirely believe that, but I got to say I mostly believe that because prison rape normally occurs where you have prisoners that are out of view of anyone and able to be somewhere where someone can be the victim of sexual assault.
In this instance, when you have prison guards with machine guns watching you at every moment, there's not a lot of capacity to engage in an act of violence.
I want to go back to what you were talking about, the conditions there, and also the rules and how they're running their prisons down there in a way that I'm kind of jealous that we're not doing it here.
Well, you mentioned that it is designed to make life unpleasant.
And I will say, look, it's clearly designed to incapacitate.
And it's doing that incredibly effectively.
They've taken the murderers off the streets.
But it is also designed.
Listen, I've been to prisons before in Texas.
I've been to the prison in Huntsville.
I've been to death row in Huntsville.
When I was the Solicitor General of Texas, there were multiple legal challenges to the method of capital punishment in Texas.
And I was defending that.
I was defending that in federal court.
So I felt an obligation that I needed to go and personally observe an execution, that I couldn't do my job effectively and litigate defending the method that Texas used for capital punishment unless I observed it myself.
So I went there.
I was behind the scenes and saw how capital punishment was executed.
And I will tell you, look, being in a Texas prison is no walk in a park, to put it mildly, but it pales in comparison to what I observed there.
I have to say, I cannot imagine life.
It is hell on earth.
It is you are locked up every minute of the day.
Now, you're not subjected, assuming the reports from the head of the prison is accurate, you're not subjected to violence and threats.
And by the way, one of the things they do, so previously prisons had separated each gang.
So they'd sent MS-13 to one and 18th Street Barrio to another.
In this instance, they don't do that.
In fact, they mix gang members, multiple gang members in the same cell.
And part of the reason for that is they said, look, if you put all the MS-13 gang members in one prison, they end up operating the gang out of there and it becomes a safe haven.
And in this case, and by the way, these gangs, they're not just sort of rivals.
It's not like, you know, the Yankees and the Mets.
I mean, they are murdering each other.
Yeah.
Like, if they see each other in the streets, they open fire.
And they're suddenly locked together in a cell.
So of the 100 prisoners in a cell, and I saw like lined up, you would see the main ones were MS-13 and 18th Street Barrio.
And you would see the tats, and they're all together, and they had to learn to, like, they're going to be locked up in the same cage together for a long time.
I saw several prisoners.
I'm going to tell you in a minute about an extended conversation I had with an MS-13 gang member, which was chilling.
But I will say I saw several prisoners.
There was one they showed me that had a prison sentence of over a thousand years.
Wow.
So he had been convicted of over six homicides, at least six.
And one of the things the justice minister said to me about MS-13, he said, in the United States, to become an MS-13 member, you have to murder someone.
That is the process of admission.
You cannot be admitted to the gang if you don't kill somebody.
What the Justice Minister told me is in El Salvador, to be a member of the gang, you had to commit 10 murders.
So one of the things he described to me, he said, listen, these people are serial killers.
They are mass murderers.
And the reason the crime rate plummeted is because they took all the mass murderers off the street.
They took the gang members.
And gang activity is essentially non-existent.
And so I had dinner in downtown San Salvador, a very nice restaurant, a steak restaurant there.
And the folks I was having dinner with, it was a cabinet member I was having dinner with, and she said, look, it used to be a few years ago, nobody would come here at night because you would be robbed, you would be kidnapped, you'd be murdered.
And I'll tell you, when I came to downtown, downtown was beautiful.
There were families, there were kids playing, like it was transformation.
And this prison and this zero tolerance, they went after and they arrested, they put in jail all the gang members.
They said, if you join the gang, it is a terrorist organization to join the gang.
You are a murderer, and we are taking you off the street.
And the success of it is incredible.
But they gave me an opportunity to visit with an MS-13 gang member who was from Texas.
And so they pulled him aside because he was from Texas.
And they said, you may want to talk with him.
And so I did.
I talked with him for quite a bit of time.
He was in his early 40s.
He had lived much of his life in the United States.
So he had perfect English.
And he had lived in Dallas for many years as an MS-13 gang member.
And he described how he had grown up in Virginia.
And he lived in Virginia and Maryland and D.C.
And he said that he became an MS-13 gang member when he was 13 years old in Falls Church, Virginia.
And he described, I said, well, how did you come to be at this prison?
And he said, well, I was deported.
So he was illegally in the United States.
He said, I was deported.
I was sent back to El Salvador.
And he said, I committed a homicide here and was convicted of homicide.
So he murdered someone in El Salvador, at least one person.
And he admitted to it.
He was not hiding it.
He's like, yeah, I committed a homicide, and that's why I'm here.
And I said, well, did you commit crimes in the United States?
He said, yes, yes, I did.
And I said, well, what crimes did you commit?
Did you commit murder in the United States?
And he wouldn't answer.
And it was clear.
Look, he hadn't been convicted of murder in the United States.
But he said, well, I committed crimes.
But he didn't want to answer the specific question.
And it was interesting.
The justice minister was standing there with me.
And he chimed in and he pressed again.
He said, look, did you commit homicide in the United States?
Tell us.
And his response, he said, well, you know how you become a member of MS-13.
So he did.
I mean, that's about as only some of the answers you're going to get, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He said he became a member when he was 13.
And the way you become a member is you murder some.
And he'd been in Virginia at extended times.
He'd been in Dallas as a gang member.
So I don't know.
He may have murdered Texans.
He did not detail.
And he was covered in tats.
And I talked to him, and he had a 40-year sentence, so he will get out in his 80s.
And I was asked him about that.
And he has a family.
He has a wife, and he has two kids.
He has a daughter, and he has a 13-year-old son.
They're all in El Salvador.
And I asked him, I said, okay, your son is 13.
He's the same age you were when you joined MS-13.
I asked, do you want him to join the gang?
And he looked at me horrified.
He said, no, God, no.
And he had a comment.
It was a weird comment where he said, look, my son is living here now and it's safe and he doesn't have to join a gang.
And it was, this is someone whose entire life is going to be in a cage, in a hole.
And by the way, he said, I'll never see my wife again.
I will never see my children again.
Like, there's no visitation.
There's no, he is locked in a cage with 99 other gang members for the rest of his life.
Wow.
And look, there was a despair.
And I asked him, I said, look, you became, you joined the gang at 13.
Why'd you join the gang?
He said, look, all my friends were, everyone I knew was.
That was the world I was in, that you joined the gang.
You joined the gang to survive.
And I asked him, I said, well, if you wanted to, could you quit?
Let's say you were 15 or 16 or 17.
You said, all right, I'm done.
He said, no, there's no way to quit.
He said, you had two options, kill or die.
That's what life was as a gang member.
And I have to say, listen, this is someone who I assume has committed multiple murders.
He admitted to at least two, one in El Salvador and at least one in the United States, and it may have been many more.
And so I'm very glad he's incarcerated and not murdering people anymore.
But I will say, you know, I mean, I felt a sadness that this is a human being whose entire life is just a waste.
Yeah.
And it was, and the sentiment he expressed, I mean, he really did express joy is the wrong word for it, but I'd say gratitude that his 13-year-old son does not have to live in a world.
And he basically said, look, El Salvador is much safer than it's ever been.
I mean, he was almost saying it's a good thing he's in prison.
He didn't quite say that.
But when he was talking about his son, that's basically what he was saying.
And that, I got to say, look, in U.S. prisons, they'll let you read books.
They'll let you watch TV.
They'll let you lift weights.
They'll let you play basketball.
They'll let you play sports.
You socialize.
And there may be some virtue to that.
But I got to say, any gang member, gang activity has disappeared in El Salvador.
And if you knew what life was like for these guys, there's no way on earth you'd be willing to join a gang because their lives is effectively over.
What are the other parts of your trip involve going to the Panama Canal and seeing some different things, including a lot that deals with China now?
It's been a big concern.
Talk about that.
Yeah, so I spent a day and a half in Panama.
I flew from El Salvador to Panama and met with multiple cabinet members, the finance minister, the defense minister, the public safety minister, and the head of the Panama Canal.
And I will say, number one, Panama is a beautiful country.
It is a gorgeous place.
And the people of Panama have a deep affinity for America.
I was struck by that.
Repeatedly, the government officials, the Panamanians that I visited with, there's a long history and a close, close affinity for the United States.
The Panama Canal is amazing.
So I went out in a boat and went to the outer parts of the Panama Canal, and then I went to one of the locks, and I saw one of the Panama, the super tankers coming through, and then also saw a little sailboat coming through, and then a kind of medium-sized container ship coming through.
It is amazing.
It is very cool, number one, just how the Panama Canal operates.
Like, you see the Panamex, the super tanker, the container ship, is the largest size possible to fit through the Panama Canal.
It's built for that size.
I mean, it is literally this massive ship that is going through these locks, and these locks have concrete on the side, and it's built so the sides of the ship are within two feet of the concrete walls on both sides.
Like, it's that big.
And what happens, so we were on the Pacific end of the canal, and a ship comes in, and each of the locks has to lower the ship 27 feet.
So it comes into the locks, and it's interesting for the big tanker.
They connect steel cables to the tanker, and they have locomotives on both sides to help keep the ship right in the center.
You've got only two feet of clearance on both sides, so it'd be really easy for it to smack into the side of the canal.
And it is in the lock, and then it takes about eight to ten minutes for the water to drain and for it to lower 27 feet.
And it's lowering 27 feet, and it goes to the next lock, and it lowers another.
I believe it's 27 feet.
All told, it's about 81 feet that it has to rise to get to the height of the lake in the interior, and then it has to lower to get to the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
And both the Atlantic and Pacific are about the same distance.
To lower the water 27 feet takes eight to ten minutes.
And so the water goes down, and then the giant gates open.
It was amazing to watch the technology.
I saw the old control room.
I saw the control room where the lock is being operated.
The old control room.
So the Panama Canal was built in 1914.
The United States built it.
And we lost thousands and thousands of lives building it.
It's an incredible engineering marvel.
So the old control room had these brass GE equipment.
You saw the old GE, General Electric and Electric.
They built one of the first early computers to help operate the locks.
It's amazing.
Now, now it's all computerized and high-tech.
So the old brass controls of each lock that gives you the water height.
And it was literally, it almost looks like something Captain Nemo would have in terms of the 1914 levers and switches to operate the canal that's still preserved there.
When I went out on the boat, one of the things I saw, Ben, is right at the entrance, the Pacific entrance of the canal, there is a gigantic port that is owned and controlled by Communist China.
And it's right there.
And they have cranes.
They're right there in a position.
There is also China is building a bridge, a bridge across the canal.
It is a bridge for cars.
They were awarded the contract to build the bridge.
China is also, there's a Chinese company that is digging a tunnel under the canal for a metro train.
And so I saw where the metro was going to go.
I saw the bridge being built.
And it's all right there at the mouth of the canal.
And I went, the purpose of my visit was to meet with the Panamanian government and say, look, China cannot have control of this canal.
It is too important to the United States, to our national security, to our economic security.
As you know, I'm the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over the Panama Canal.
And so earlier this year, I chaired a hearing on the Panama Canal in the Commerce Committee, and we laid out the concerns, in particular the concerns of China.
And what I laid out to the Panamanian officials, I said, look, if, God forbid, we find ourselves in a military conflict with China.
Let's say next year China invades Taiwan, and President Xi has repeatedly said he wants to invade Taiwan.
If he does so, there's a very real possibility that escalates into a military conflict with the United States.
If China is in an active military conflict with the United States, I think the risk is unacceptable that China would try to shut down the Panama Canal.
Because if they shut down the Panama Canal, it massively delays our ability to move military ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific to engage with the Chinese in Taiwan because it forces our military ships instead to go around the southern tip of South America rather than cut through the canal.
And so if you're President Xi, look, you wouldn't do it in time of peace, but if they're at war, it becomes a really compelling situation to say, let's impose massive economic harm on the United States, and we get enormous benefits.
There are billions of dollars of revenue that comes from shipping, shipping, whether it is oil and gas through the Panama Canal or goods and containers.
And shutting down the Panama Canal would be a real blow to the United States economy, but it would also be a real blow to our military because it would limit our ability to move naval ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
It would massively delay moving those ships.
And so what I'm pressing Panama, I will say, when I chaired the hearing on the Panama Canal, within a week, they announced the deal to sell those two Chinese ports to an American business consortium.
That deal has not gone through yet.
The Chinese are slow walking it.
And part of the purpose of my trip was to press the Panamanian government and say, look, you need to get the Chinese the hell out of here.
Do not leave them in a position where they can shut down this canal because shutting down this canal would be an enormous economic and national security blow to the United States, but it would also be an enormous blow to Panama.
And so part of the case I was making to them is their interests and our interests are aligned.
They don't want China to be in a position to shut down the canal.
Yeah, great point.
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