Berkeley Human Rights Center challenges CBS decision to pull '60 Minutes' El Salvador prison report

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The Human Rights Center, based at UC Berkeley's School of Law, is pushing back after CBS pulled a "60 Minutes" investigation into alleged abuses inside El Salvador's CECOT prison. That is the notorious megaprison where the Trump administration had sent Venezuelan migrants. The report that would have aired on December 21 featured the center's student-driven analysis that sought to verify claims of abuse at the prison.

In an interview with ABC7 News anchor Kristen Sze on ABC7 News at 3 p.m., HRC's co-faculty director Alexa Koenig said her team was "surprised" to learn the segment had been shelved despite clearing CBS's extensive legal and editorial review. Berkeley researchers had spent months corroborating detainees' accounts using geolocation, image analysis, and other opensource methods.

Koenig noted that while CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss reportedly questioned the relevance of the Berkeley analysis, "What matters most to us is that the information our students collect is accurate and rigorously verified."

She told us the moment raises broader questions about political pressure and the public's access to evidence-based human rights reporting.

Koenig emphasized that the Human Rights Center's mission to train the next generation of investigators to document human rights abuses using evidence-based, court-admissible methods depends on public trust in independent reporting.

She hopes viewers will consider what it means when a fully vetted investigation into alleged torture is withheld from the public.

Watch the full interview in the media player above.