A 60 Minutes episode investigating a brutal prison in El Salvador, which CBS News’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, pulled from the air on Sunday, appeared online on Monday after appearing on a Canadian TV app.
The segment, which runs for nearly 14 minutes and was viewed by the Guardian, provides an in-depth look at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) prison in El Salvador. It opens with footage of the mega-prison and shows detainees being shackled upon arrival in El Salvador.
The episode was published on a streaming platform owned by Global TV, the network that has the rights to 60 Minutes in Canada.
“The first thing he told us was that we would never see the light of day or night again. He said: ‘Welcome to hell,’” recalled Luis Muñoz Pinto, a Venezuelan college student now living in Colombia, who speaks in the segment.
He had traveled to the US seeking asylum and was arrested in 2024 at his appointment with US Customs and Border Protection in California.
“They just looked at me and told me I was a danger to society,” Pinto recalled. He told correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi he had no criminal record. “I never even had a traffic ticket.”
The episode had been slated to air on Sunday, but was pulled by CBS, which said the segment “needed additional reporting” and would “air in a future broadcast”. The removal of the episode prompted backlash both within CBS News and externally.
Alfonsi issued a private note to her CBS colleagues on Sunday, noting the episode “was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and standards and practices. 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.”
On Monday, Weiss addressed the episode being pulled in a statement to employees: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. 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.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Pinto details how guards at Cecot treated him.
“Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth,” he said.
Alfonsi notes the poor conditions in the prison, showing images of half-dressed men with shaved heads all lined up in rows in front of bunks stacked four high. The bunks have no pillows or pads or blankets. The lights are kept on 24 hours a day and detainees have no access to clean water.
Alfonsi pointed to a 2023 report from the state department that “cited torture and life-threatening prison conditions” in Cecot, she said: “But this year, during a meeting with President Bukele at the White House, President Trump expressed admiration for El Salvador’s prison system,” before airing footage of Trump saying: “They make great facilities. Very strong facilities. They don’t play games.”
The segment also talks to Juan Pappier, deputy director at Human Rights Watch, who helped write an 81-page report that detailed Cecot’s pattern of “systematic torture” and found that nearly half the men in the prison did not actually have a criminal history. Pappier said the study was based on information obtained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s own records. Alfonsi confirmed that 60 Minutes independently corroborated Human Rights Watch’s claims.
William Losada Sánchez, a Venezuelan national and former Cecot inmate, also describes to Alfonsi what it was like to get sent to “the island” – a punishment room where prisoners would be sent if they could not comply with being forced to sit on their knees for 24 hours a day.
“The island is a little room where there’s no light, no ventilation, nothing. It’s a cell for punishment where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us,” he said.
The segment briefly touches on Kristi Noem’s visit to Cecot. Pinto claims the Department of Homeland Security secretary did not speak to a single detainee during her visit. There is also a video of Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, saying: “These are heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country, and they must be held accountable.”
The segment also says that DHS and the government of El Salvador declined to comment.
On Tuesday afternoon, a CBS News representative confirmed to the Guardian that their Canadian broadcast partner, Global TV, “mistakenly published” the Cecot episode.
“While Global TV has removed the episode from their app, this segment has since been posted on social and digital media. Paramount’s content protection team is in the process of routine take down orders for the unaired and unauthorized segment,” the statement said.
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator, shared the episode online, saying: “Take a few minutes to watch what they didn’t want you to see. This story should be told.”
The removal and then subsequent leaking of the segment comes amid ongoing turmoil between 60 Minutes and the Trump administration. On 16 December, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “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!” A week before that, Trump blasted 60 Minutes for its interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom he called a “very poorly prepared Traitor,” and said of parent company Paramount: “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP.”
Larry Ellison put through a $108.4bn hostile takeover bid via Paramount for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) this week in an effort to make WBD renege on the deal that was announced last week with Netflix. The tech billionaire’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global earlier this year and then went on to acquire Weiss’s independent media outlet The Free Press. He then appointed Weiss as CBS News’ head of editorial.