Dozens of TikTok creators are theorizing that satellite images show evidence of mass killings at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the prison where the Trump administration is sending deported immigrants.
The U.S. has deported more than 200 people to El Salvador since facilitating a deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to indefinitely detain the deportees, most of whom are Venezuelan.
Among the prisoners is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national deported due to an “administrative error.”
The Trump administration, with support from Bukele, has so far defied a Supreme Court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.
As the internet hears more about the CECOT, a red-brown pile visible in satellite photos of the otherwise pristine facility caught the attention of TikTok sleuths.
@sydneyseraph Genuinely, how is this happening. Replying to every comment to help get this information out. #greenscreen #greenscreenvideo ♬ original sound – SydneySeraph 
“For the love of God, I need everyone to stop scrolling to look at this satellite image with me,” one TikToker said, implying the splotch may be dead bodies or blood. “I’m just so sick to my stomach.”
A follow-up video from the same creator, @SydneySeraph, has racked up 1.2 million views.
Other TikTok users shared the same theory.
“There’s this one spot over here that looks a little suspicious,” said creator @JohnVictor in a video with more than 600,000 views. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m really nervous about it.”
@jonjoseph I do not want to spread misinformation. But can anybody shed light on what is going on here?
♬ original sound – Jon Joseph
CECOT was unsearchable on Google Maps and Google Earth this morning, which sometimes blocks sensitive locations. Users can still find the facility using its exact coordinates.
In a statement to the Daily Dot, Google said the “listing was incorrectly removed due to an edit from a Maps user” and would be reinstated.
The splotch is visible on the most recent satellite image, taken in March 2024, but does not appear in an image dated November 2023.
The prison opened in January 2023—its swift construction is visible via Google Earth history—as part of El Salvador’s still-active “state of exception,” which gives the country’s security forces unchecked power to arrest and detain suspected gang members without evidence.
Prisoners at the complex have life sentences, where they are denied any contact with the outside world and face overcrowding and improper food and sanitation conditions, Emerson College political scientist Mneesha Gellman told the Guardian last month.
“There’s been a few political prisoners who’ve been released and spoken to the media,” Gellman said. “Some of them have described things like seeing people die in the cells with them, and then the bodies are left there for extended periods of time.”
But figures on the American right have lauded Bukele for his crackdown on crime. Reps. Riley Moore (R-W. Va.) and Jason Moore (R-Mo.) toured CECOT on Tuesday, with Moore even grabbing a selfie in front of a cell shared by dozens of prisoners.
And while the speculation is just that, the conditions at the prison, which can reportedly house up to 40,000 people, have made it easier for some social media users to get ahead of themselves.
“He won’t be returned because he’s dead,” one X user wrote, referring to Abrego Garcia. “CECOT is a death camp.”
“People go in but they never come out,” a commenter on TikTok chimed in. “That’s all the context we need.”
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