"Inside CECOT" is a segment that was originally intended to be broadcast on the December 21, 2025, episode of 60 Minutes, a television news magazine from CBS News. Presented by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, the segment discusses the experiences of detainees at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security prison in El Salvador used to confine Venezuelan migrants who had been deported from the US by the Trump administration in early 2025. The segment, which contains interviews with former detainees and photographic evidence detailing systematic torture at the facility, independently corroborates earlier conclusions made by Human Rights Watch. Reports by former detainees and journalists have described "El Salvador's CECOT" as a "living nightmare" and "hellscape" due to the extremely harsh conditions and high-tech surveillance present in the facility.
Three hours prior to broadcast, CBS News announced that the segment had been pulled and would be broadcast at a later date; Alfonsi accused CBS News's new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of spiking the story for political reasons. Weiss claimed that the story "was not ready" for broadcast; sources within CBS News told outlets including The New York Times that two days before the anticipated broadcast, Weiss had asked the producers to arrange an interview with Trump administration operative Stephen Miller, who designed the deportation policy, or an administration operative of similar rank. Alfonsi stated in an email memorandum to colleagues that the production team did request comments and interviews from White House officials, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security (which were all refused), and that the segment was reviewed five times and approved by the CBS legal department and Standards and Practices division.
On December 22, 2025, a cut of the episode that still contained the "Inside CECOT" story was accidentally made available online by Canadian broadcaster Global, causing the segment to be widely disseminated. The segment was shared en masse by activists, causing it to quickly spread across the internet; most iterations of it were removed after CBS began issuing takedown orders via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, though it remains on archival sites and several irregular distribution platforms. Weiss met with major backlash from numerous journalists, progressive groups, and public officials, who deemed the cancellation unjustified, and to have been carried out at the behest of the Trump administration.
The segment eventually aired in an updated form on the January 18, 2026, episode of 60 Minutes; while the body of the report was unchanged, it was updated to include a new intro and outro by Alfonsi with statements from White House and DHS officials, as well as acknowledgements of the United States' subsequent intervention in Venezuela and capture of president Nicolás Maduro in January 2026.
Background
The Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) is a maximum security prison in El Salvador. Its original purpose was to house individuals accused or convicted of gang membership amid a large-scale crackdown on gangs by the administration of Nayib Bukele that began in 2022. Under the second Trump administration, the prison has held some individuals deported from the United States under a $6 million deal with the Salvadoran government.
252 Venezuelan migrants were sent to the prison in March 2025 despite a federal court temporarily blocking the order, determining that the administration did not have grounds to deport them under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The identities of the migrants were not disclosed by the Trump administration prior to their deportation; no proof of criminal wrongdoing was provided by US authorities, nor was evidence that the detainees were members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang whose alleged "invasion" was used to justify the invocation of wartime powers by the Trump administration.
A joint report published in November 2025 by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal showed evidence of "systematic torture and abuse" by prison officials. They concluded that the men "were subjected to what amounts to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance under international human rights law". Their findings showed evidence of additional human rights abuses:[T]he people held in CECOT were subjected to inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged incommunicado detention, inadequate food, denial of basic hygiene and sanitation, limited access to health care and medicine, and lack of recreational or educational activities, in violation of several provisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners ... detainees were subjected to constant beatings and other forms of ill-treatment, including some cases of sexual violence.Inmates were held without contact to the outside world until July 18, when they were released to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange between the Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments. Inmate testimony and the details of their detention led the organizations to contend that the Trump administration was "complicit in torture, enforced disappearance, and other grave violations".
Paramount Skydance and CBS Meanwhile, in the lead-up to the acquisition of CBS parent company Paramount Global by Skydance Media, it was suggested that Paramount and CBS News had been increasingly currying favor with the second Trump administration in order to ensure regulatory approval, including settling a lawsuit accusing CBS News of editing a 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris to sway public interest. In July, CBS declined to renew The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—widely regarded as critical of Trump's administration—shortly after host Stephen Colbert criticized the settlement on-air (with the network claiming this was for budgetary reasons), and "explicitly promised the Federal Communications Commission" (FCC) that they would work to diversify the viewpoints they broadcast moving forward.
In October 2025, after the acquisition had taken place, Paramount Skydance acquired Bari Weiss's The Free Press, enlisting Weiss to be editor-in-chief of CBS News. The decision was criticized by some within the network, given that Weiss's background was primarily in opinion and commentary, having no experience working in broadcast journalism. Upon her recruitment at CBS, she was "given a mandate to reshape the network's editorial coverage toward a more centrist viewpoint"; Weiss does not answer to CBS News president and executive editor Tom Cibrowski, but rather reports directly to David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance.
On December 12, 2025, at the Walter Cronkite Award presentation, former CBS Evening News anchor and long-time 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley said that the program had yet to experience "corporate interference of any kind" since the Paramount Skydance takeover, explaining that "it's early yet, but what I can tell you is we are doing the same kinds of stories with the same kind of rigor".
Broadcast postponement On the afternoon of December 21, 2025, prior to the airing of the episode, CBS News announced the CECOT segment had been pulled from the episode, and would air at a later date, without disclosing a reason. Multiple sources and commentators noted that this action was almost unprecedented, with stories almost never being pulled after such a vigorous screening process as typically occurs at 60 Minutes. The story was replaced by two segments, one concerning a family of classical musicians in England, the other an extended piece on the work of Mount Everest's Sherpas.
Weiss's decisions followed commentary by Trump implying that he ultimately held control over the outcome of a battle between Paramount Skydance and Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. In a Truth Social post, Trump was critical of the Ellison family (owners of Paramount Skydance) over his perception that 60 Minutes had unjustly portrayed him in a negative light. In the post, Trump stated,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!In an email sent to colleagues, Alfonsi accused Weiss of intervening for political reasons, referencing the fact that the Trump administration had declined due-diligence requests for comment by 60 Minutes staff. She accused the Trump administration of dodging those requests in an effort to avoid criticism for its deportation and imprisonment of hundreds of individuals without trial, among them many who had no discernably relevant criminal history, or who displayed no "clear evidence of past wrongdoing". She argued that CBS was "trading 50 years of 'Gold Standard' reputation for a single week of political quiet". Alfonsi asserted that the story was "factually correct" and had been "screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices." She added:
Pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.... Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. 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.
Aftermath and internal deliberation In a meeting the following morning, Weiss said that the report was pulled because it "was not ready", and that it did not "advance the ball" beyond what had been reported by other outlets. She elaborated,The Times and other outlets have previously done similar work. The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment at this prison. To run a story on this subject two months later, we need to do more. And this is 60 Minutes. We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera. Our viewers come first. Not the listing schedule or anything else. At the meeting, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley again brought up the fact that Weiss had not turned up to any of the five internal screenings of the segment during the final stages of editing. Pundits have noted that her intervention came only after the piece had been finalized and promoted on social media. CBS News publicly announced the segment was postponed only three hours before the anticipated broadcast.
Speaking to sources within CBS News, the New York Times pieced together a more detailed timeline of the story's progress. The first of five internal screenings that Weiss did not attend took place on December 12. Three days before the anticipated December 21 broadcast, Weiss watched the segment and sent suggestions that producers then incorporated into the segment's script. Two days before the anticipated broadcast, Weiss asked producers to interview White House operative Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's migrant deportation program, or an operative of similar rank. Miller later stated that he did not remember receiving any requests for comment from CBS for the story.