Northwest Arkansas residents gathered outside the El Salvador Consulate in Springdale Thursday to highlight hundreds of immigrants deported to a Central American prison without due process.
More than two dozen people attended the event, which was hosted by Indivisible Northwest Arkansas in conjunction with similar protests across the United States on the birthday of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.
The Trump administration deported more than 200 Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, in March. The deportations were conducted without giving the Venezuelans time to have their cases heard by a judge, which is part of due process. The U.S. paid El Salvador $6 million to detain the men.
A wrongly deported Maryland man held in the prison until he was returned to the U.S. in June detailed psychological and physical torture in court documents. Last week, Venezuela released 10 jailed U.S. citizens and permanent residents in exchange for many of the migrants deported to CECOT, according to the Associated Press.
Lisa Childs, co-leader of Indivisible NWA, said protesters held signs along one of Springdale’s busiest roads Thursday because “we are very upset about kidnapping United States residents.” Childs said she’s “very glad” Venezuelan prisoners were released, “but we want that not to ever happen again.”
“That’s not acceptable. That’s not how due process works,” she said. “I’m a lawyer and that’s not how you should do things in the United States.”
Dallas Morrison said he participated in Thursday’s protest because he could not just sit at home with everything happening in the country.
“All that’s in the news, I was just disgusted by it, so I just had to do something,” Morrison said. “This is may be small, may be big, I don’t know, but this is to let people know that we stand with those people who are disenfranchised.”
Dallas Morrison holds up signs protesting the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador
Dallas Morrison participated in a protest against the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvador jail during an event organized by Indivisible NWA on July 24, 2025 in Springdale. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate)
Originally from the east coast, Morrison retired to Northwest Arkansas about three years ago after working for the federal government for 25 years. Having worked in the federal courts, he witnessed the deportation of undocumented immigrants, which left him conflicted.
“I’m one of those individuals who feel that you obey our laws, but just the same, we have laws that you have to abide by, and this deportation without due process is, I’ll call it shameful but I’m being very nice when I say it that way,” he said. “We, as a country, we need to treat people better.”
Though the protest was staged outside of the El Salvador Consulate, Childs noted participants weren’t protesting the consulate, which does “really important work” for immigrants. Instead, the event was “about pressuring our government to do better.”
Childs said she hasn’t been personally affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, but she has seen the toll it can take on fellow Arkansans. Over the weekend, Childs said Indivisible NWA members listened to a presentation from Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy group, about ways citizens can be supportive of immigrants. Prior to the presentation’s start, Childs said AU Executive Director Mireya Reith received a call related to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement incident.
“So it’s neighbors, but you don’t have to experience it for your heart to hurt,” Childs said.
Reith told the Advocate Thursday that initial contact with ICE in Arkansas generally has been tied to some kind of warrant. But they’ve also seen collateral arrests of individuals who weren’t the initial target consistently since January, she said.
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