Inside CECOT

"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. Via interviews with former detainees and via photographic evidence, the segment describes systematic torture at the facility, independently corroborating earlier conclusions by Human Rights Watch, according to the reports by the survivors ("detainees") and journalists which described "El Salvador's CECOT" as a "living nightmare" and a "hellscape" with features typical of a dystopian horror film due to the extreme conditions and high-tech surveillance.

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 architected 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 (DHS, 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 a modified 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.