All about the infamous CECOT prison — on which CBS's Bari Weiss pulled a story

Bari Weiss, the conservative lesbian who recently became editor in chief of CBS News, abruptly killed a story about El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison that was to run on 60 Minutes Sunday night. Weiss is getting much criticism for the decision, which she denies was politically motivated. She said the story wasn’t ready for airing and that it would be shown at a later date.

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be,” she said in a statement late Sunday, as reported by The New York Times and other media outlets. “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

However, Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the story, begged to differ. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a private note to coworkers, a copy of which was obtained by the Times and others. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Here's what to know about CECOT, to which Donald Trump’s administration deported 252 Venezuelan refugees in March, including gay makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero. He and the others were released in a prisoner swap in July. Following that is a rundown on the situation at CBS.

The conditions at CECOT and how the men got there

“It was an encounter with torture and death,” Hernández Romero told journalists at his family home in Capacho, Venezuela, shortly after his release. He and others were beaten, shot with rubber projectiles, and confined in dark cells, he said. “Many of our fellows have wounds from the nightsticks; they have fractured ribs, fractured fingers and toes, marks from the handcuffs,” he added. “Others have marks on their chests, on their face ... from the projectiles.” The men were forced to sleep on metal slabs without mattresses, pillows, or blankets and were under constant surveillance.

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. Hernández Romero and the other refugees were deported from the U.S. to CECOT because of the Trump administration’s claim that they had connections to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration alleged the gang was an arm of the Venezuelan government and was invading the U.S., and Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a law dating from 1798.

“Most if not all of these men had no real connections to Tren de Aragua at all but had been falsely identified as such by low-level [Department of Homeland Security] officers,” the American Immigration Council notes. Hernández Romero, for instance, had tattoos with crowns, which U.S. immigration officers considered a sign of ties to the gang. He said the crowns were a tribute to Three Kings Day. He had no criminal record and had entered the U.S. legally in 2024, seeking asylum due to antigay persecution in Venezuela. The U.S. government deported him and the rest of the men without due process and in defiance of court orders to stop the flights to El Salvador.

Related: Inside the movement that freed gay makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero from a hellhole

In another interview shortly after his release, with the Venezuelan program Con Maduro +, Hernández Romero said prison guards abused him for simply pouring some water on himself. “They took me to solitary confinement and abused me,” he said. “I was forced to perform oral sex on an officer. Three officers grabbed the batons and passed them over my private parts. And for me, that was just too devastating. It was my integrity as a human being, as a person of the [LGBTQ+] community, that [brought me to my lowest point.]”

Photojournalist Philip Holsinger, in an April story for60 Minutes Overtime, said he witnessed Romero saying, “I’m innocent” and “I’m gay,” and crying while guards shaved his head.

“He was being slapped every time he would speak up … he started praying and calling out, literally crying for his mother,” Holsinger said. “His crying out for his mother really, really touched me.”

Of the prisoners in general, Holsinger said, “They’ve been stripped of their hair and their clothes. … It’s like your life just ceased to exist. You’re just a person in white clothes now.” As he observed the prisoners, he added, he had “a sense of watching people disappear.”

Related: Andry Hernández Romero explains how he survived CECOT after the U.S. government disappeared him

In an exclusive interview withThe Advocate after his release, Hernández Romero said, “I want the world to know that being Venezuelan is not a crime.” He said he was gratified by all the interest in his case from the U.S.

“I never imagined my name, my image, my story would be so influential in the United States,” he said. “I never thought a large part of the American community would identify with the problem we were facing. It feels very beautiful to be that spokesperson for many, to let them know they are not alone, that the community is always there.”

What’s going on at CBS

Weiss, a former New York Times commentator, was named editor in chief at CBS News in October after David Ellison, the owner of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, acquired her online publication, The Free Press.

She had resigned from the Times in 2020, claiming that the paper had become an “illiberal environment" intolerant of anything that doesn’t fit a left-wing “orthodoxy.” Another gay conservative, Andrew Sullivan, resigned at the same time.

Many saw her appointment at CBS as a move to placate Trump. He had sued the network over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, his opponent in last year’s presidential race, which he contended was deceptively edited. He had declined an interview with the program. The network’s parent company settled the suit with a $16 million payment to Trump.

CBS has also canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in what it called a financial decision. But the show, which will stop airing when the current season ends in the spring, has had high ratings — and Colbert is an unflinching critic of Trump.

Related: CBS is treating Stephen Colbert’s smart fans like fools by citing a ‘financial decision’

Now Ellison is seeking Trump’s support for his attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, but the president still seems hostile to 60 Minutes. “For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” he wrote recently on Truth Social.

The blowback to Weiss

One of Weiss’s suggestions for the CECOT piece was to add an interview with a highly placed member of the Trump administration, such as Stephen Miller, a deputy chief of staff at the White House who has been instrumental in creating the administration’s harsh immigration policies, the Times reports.

But Alfonsi said she had already sought comment from the administration without success, the Associated Press reports. “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” she wrote in her message to colleagues. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

Kelly McBride, senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization, told The Washington Post that requiring interviews with administration officials “would give them the power to pick and choose which stories they want to go out. It would allow them to literally craft the narrative themselves.”

Tanya Simon, executive producer of 60 Minutes, said in a private meeting Monday that she and her staff stood by the story but “ultimately had to comply” with Weiss, according to the Post, which obtained a partial transcript of the meeting.

Also during the meeting, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said, “We’re incredibly proud of you, Sharyn, and everybody else on this story. You are doing exactly what you’re supposed to do — what this broadcast is about. And I think you’re going to find all of us standing and cheering around you.” Pelley had previously said he and others had reported critically on Trump without interference.

Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland and former broadcast reporter, told the Post, “Is Bari Weiss functioning as the managing editor of CBS News, or as the Trump administration’s in-house censor? CBS’s proud legacy of journalistic integrity, going back to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, is sadly tarnished in ways that may never be repaired.”

Democratic U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Ed Markey of Massachusetts also lambasted Weiss’s decision. “What is happening to CBS is a terrible embarrassment and if executives think they can build shareholder value by avoiding journalism that might offend the Mad King they are about to learn a tough lesson,” Schatz wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Markey wrote on the platform, “This is what government censorship looks like.”