’60 Minutes’ segment airs in Canada, spreads online

Viewers got a chance to see the “60 Minutes” segment about CECOT that divided CBS News, after the segment aired in Canada and quickly spread online Monday. 

The “Inside CECOT” segment that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled from airing on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” episode, leading to a sharp rebuke from its correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, was delivered to Canada’s Global TV app. Internet figures recorded it to make it available across the web before it could be pulled down again.

Independent journalist Yashar Ali, who posted the video, reported this was “only part of the overall story” but this is what exists so far.

In the segment, which can be viewed here and runs 13 minutes and 39 seconds, Alfonsi interviews two Venezuelan men who were deported by the Trump administration to the notorious El Salvador prison. She said they endured “four months of hell,” with the subjects describing assaults, disgusting living conditions and constant degrading behavior by guards.

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Another said that inmates who stepped out of line were taken to “The Island,” which he described as a small room with no light or ventilation, a “cell for punishment.” “The torture was never-ending,” one said of the place, and he claimed they were purposefully beaten in their private areas by the guards.

The segment that’s being spread online has no sit-down interviews with Trump officials or any administration statements beyond brief clips of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and President Donald Trump. Axios reported that the White House, Department of Homeland Security and State Department all provided statements to CBS, but none of them were included in the story. 

Fox News Digital reached out to CBS and the three press offices for those entities for comment.

Alfonsi notes the Department of Homeland Security declined an interview request and referred CECOT questions to the El Salvadoran government, which didn’t respond to its request.

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Alfonsi recounted that the prison’s cramped conditions and reputation for brutal treatment have put it under the microscope of human rights watchdogs. At one point, she repeated a report that “nearly half” of the 252 Venezuelans sent to the prison didn’t have a criminal history, and she interviewed deputy Human Rights Watch Director Juan Pappier, who authored a report about torture at CECOT.

“Rapid deportations have been a key part of the Trump administration’s immigration overhaul,” Alfonsi says in the report. “The administration considers anyone who crosses the border illegally to be a criminal. Illegal crossings are now at a historic low.”

But she said some immigration attorneys claim the administration has used “flawed criteria” to justify deportations.

In another portion, the segment airs Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s March speech in front of the prison, which featured silent, heavily tattooed prisoners behind her and drew harsh criticism from administration foes. Alfonsi then interviewed an “intrepid team of students” at the University of California-Berkeley’s Human Rights Center who she said proved that the men behind her during the speech were El Salvadorans, not the deported Venezuelans. 

The Venezuelans sent to CECOT were released in July in a trade for 10 imprisoned Americans in Venezuela.

In her notes to the “60 Minutes” staff that leaked to the media about delaying the segment from airing, Weiss outlined how she wanted to see the story advanced. She lauded that Alfonsi’s segment contained “powerful testimonies” but suggested it followed similar lines of a New York Times article last month that outlined horrific conditions at the prison.

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For one, she wanted to know if any Trump administration officials still defended or perhaps regretted using the Alien Enemies Act in light of CECOT’s conditions. She also said she found the time spent on the Berkeley team’s analysis of the prison “strange” and added little to the story. 

She admonished the team to work harder to get Trump officials on the camera to defend themselves, saying the clip merely showed a soundbite from Leavitt about illegal immigrant crimes — it also showed Trump praising El Salvador’s tough prison system. 

Other notes included saying they should do more to explain that of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, half of them had been charged with violent offenses and giving more of the administration’s legal rationale for sending them there in the first place.

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“My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story,” she wrote. “In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.”

Weiss has taken harsh criticism from liberal media figures who, like Alfonsi, have accused her of putting her thumb on the scale for political reasons. Alfonsi fumed to colleagues that the story was ready for air and viewers would view delaying it as corporate censorship.