What was MAGA influencer Nick Shirley doing in the "Inside CECOT" report on "60 Minutes"?

When "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi tried to verify stories told by two Venezuelans about being tortured at El Salvador's notorious CECOT mega-prison, she used footage shot by unidentified influencers who had toured the prison. One of those influencers was Nick Shirley, the MAGA YouTuber who put out a now-viral video with unverified and contested allegations about fraud at Somali-run child-care centers in Minneapolis.

William Lozada Sanchez was one of 252 Venezuelan migrants sent by the Trump administration to CECOT between March and April 2025 before being flown to their home country in a prisoner swap on July 18.

Lozada Sanchez, who denied being a gang member, said he endured months of torture, physical and sexual abuse. And he described a punishment cell known as "the island."

Lozada Sanchez told Alfonsi:

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 while we were in there.

Later in the report, Alfonsi showed footage from one of the influencers who had been allowed to film inside CECOT and described an isolation cell. She said: "It matched the description of the so-called "Island' where the deportees described being tortured."

The unidentified influencer was filmed laying down on a concrete slab and saying: "And they get absolutely nothing to use to sleep or to rest. Just pure cockroach." And he seemed quite satisfied rather than horrified by what he had seen.

Here is a link to a transcript of the "60 Minutes" report. In the video Lozada Sanchez speaks about "the island" at the 8:35 mark; and the Shirley footage begins at 11:44.

I had no idea who Shirley was when I watched the leaked copy of the "Inside CECOT" report that had been delivered to CBS' Canadian affiliates. That was after Bari Weiss, CBS News' new editor-in-chief, had abruptly pulled the report just hours before the segment was scheduled to air on Sunday, Dec. 21.

Then just five days later Shirley posted a video that purported to show Somali-run day care centers containing no children which quickly went viral. Minnesota's Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth said her caucus steered Shirley to the day-care sites in the Twin Cities.

Vice President J.D. Vance reposted the video on X and commented: "This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes."

After the Trump administration froze child care funds for Minnesota on Dec. 30, reporters from the Minneapolis Star Tribune visited the day care centers that Shirley had included in his report and debunked many of his findings.

But the viral video prompted Trump to flood Minnesota with several thousand federal law enforcement personnel from ICE and other agencies, resulting in a wave of state-sanctioned violence, including the killing of Renee Nicole Good.

So when "60 Minutes" finally broadcast the "Inside CECOT" report last Sunday, it was easy to identify Shirley.

On Wednesday, right-wing media had a field day when Shirley testified before Jim Jordan's House Judiciary Committee about his Minnesota fraud allegations.

So who is this 23-year-old MAGA YouTube influencer?

The Utah native vlogged regularly throughout high school, posting stunts like taking his mom to prom during the COVID pandemic quarantine and sneaking into influencer Jake Paul's wedding in Las Vegas, according to a 2020 profile from NBC 's Utah affiliate KSL-TV.

The profile predicted: "Some people might not know who Nick Shirley is yet, but one day, they will."

And then he made a video of himself in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included an interview with the man who broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office.

Shirley announced in December 2021 that he would be taking a two-year hiatus from his You Tube channel to serve as a Mormon missionary in Santiago, Chile.

But when Shirley resumed posting on his YouTube channel in 2023, he recast himself as "an independent journalist" even though his background was as a click-obsessed prankster with no journalism background and only a high school education.

He became known in the MAGA universe by posting anti-immigrant videos that gained millions of views on YouTube and social media that complemented Trump's 2024 presidential campaign message. His YouTube channel now has 1.64 million subscribers.

In a May 2024 video titled "I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” Shirley paid Hispanic day laborers $20 each and brought them in a van to the White House to demand a meeting with President Joe Biden.

He also visited Kyiv in 2024 where he filmed luxury cars, a ferris wheel and crowded cafes, implying that U.S. taxpayer money was funding a country where no war exists. His TikTok post was widely shared by Russian social media accounts to undermine support for Ukraine. He tried to claim it was satire when confronted by Irish-born, pro-Ukraine influencer Caolan Robertson in a video.

NPR described Shirley as "part of a broader group of right-leaning journalists and political commentators who do not work for any particular outlet." The Trump White House has embraced them as "new media," giving them "unprecedented levels of access at the same time as it places restrictions on established journalistic outlets."

Shirley was among the right-wing influencers invited to speak at an Oct. 8 roundtable meeting at the White House with Trump on the supposed threat posed by the antifa movement.

University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley told member station MPR News that influencers like Shirley prioritize fearmongering over fact-checking. She said:

"They have a narrative, and they do everything they can to advance that narrative, but they seem to spend little to no time looking for the other side of the story, and that's what good investigative journalism has to do."

And that's exactly the case with Shirley's own "Inside CECOT" video which was posted on July 26, 2024.

The self-described "independent journalist" did not cite a 2023 U.S. State Department report on human rights abuses in El Salvador that cited "harsh and life-threatening prison conditions."

Nor did he interview representatives of El Salvador's top human rights group Cristostal, which eventually had to move its employees to neighboring Guatemala in July 2025 because of increasing harassment and legal threats from the government of President Nayib Bukele.

In his video, Shirley had nothing but praise for El Salvador's authoritarian leader. He said: "It's a pretty amazing thing what Nayib Bukele has been able to do with this country. The streets are safer than they've ever been because all these guys are out."

Shirley didn't seem at all concerned about the cruel and dehumanizing treatment of the prisoners as he toured the mega-prison and interviewed the warden. At one point, the guards ordered prisoners to take off their shirts so Shirley could see their tattoos. Shirley asked the prisoners in Spanish, "Are you still proud to be a gangster?"

And he concluded by saying:

"These people are criminals. They deserved to be in here ... After being one of the only outsiders to ever enter CECOT and one of the first Americans to do so, I feel honored to have been able to enter into CECOT and see what has made El Salvador the safest country in the Western Hemisphere."

Here is the video. The footage used in the "60 Minutes" segment is at the 7:18 mark.

A little over a week later, Fox News host Jesse Watters approvingly featured footage from Shirley's CECOT report and interviewed the YouTuber.

Watters asked whether what Bukele had done in El Salvador would catch on in other countries. Here's the shocking exchange that followed:

Shirley: "If any country was smart, if the United States is smart, they'd do something just like this as well to make sure that no criminal gets treated like a normal person, that you treat them like a criminal inside of a cell."

Watters: "But we have constitutional rights here, We also have thousands of lawyers licking their chops every time you sneeze on a prisoner. Do you think this was cruel and unusual?"

Shirley: "Well it is very cruel for somebody to take the life of somebody else that's innocent. So these guys being inside of that jail is somewhat justifiable I believe.

Shirley described the harsh conditions inside CECOT, adding that "these prisoners literally have no contact with the outside world."

Watters: "Wow. We could never get away with it in this country with the ACLU. But it is something to think about. It's probably not what Kamala is thinking about, it's probably the opposite."

But clearly the Trump administration has been thinking about this. Maybe an actual investigative journalist could look into whether Shirley and Watters influenced the decision to send Venezuelan migrants with tattoos to CECOT.

On Feb. 3, 2025, less than two weeks after Trump began his second term, Secretary of State Mario Rubio visited El Salvador and met Bukele.

A statement released by Rubio's spokesperson read:

President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully. He also promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country. And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.

A month later, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds of migrants to El Salvador to be imprisoned at CECOT.

When Bukele met Trump in the Oval Office on April 14, he might have been referencing Shirley's video when he mentioned that a journalist said that El Salvador had turned from the "murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere."

And Trump said he'd like to see Bukele build more massive jail complexes like CECOT.

Trump said, "We'd help them out. They're great facilities, very strong facilities and they don't play games."

Trump added that he'd like to send homegrown criminals, including U.S. citizens, to El Salvador.

"I said it to Pam (Bondi). I don't know what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals ... that are absolute monsters. ...

"I'm all for it, because we can do things with the president (Bukele) for less money and have great security. And we have a huge prison population. ..."

"Now, we're studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that's good. And I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people ,,, every bit as bad as the ones coming in."

What "60 Minutes" missed on "Inside CECOT" is that Trump considers the Salvadoran mega-prison a role model rather than an abomination where unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment is meted out on a daily basis.