Nayib Bukele imprisons alleged "alien enemies" of the United States and one of his own enemies



The weekend of March 15-16 saw the first implementation of Nayib Bukele's offer to the United States to act as the offshore jailers of persons Donald Trump wants to expel from the country. During the visit of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to El Salvador in February, Bukele offered to not only to take back Salvadorans from the US, but also to accept deportees from other nations, and even to imprison US citizen criminals for a fee. From the State Department press statement at the time:

Multiple agreements were struck to fight the waves of illegal mass migration currently destabilizing the entire region. 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.

Bukele tweeted out his offer to imprison US citizens in return for cash:



On Friday, March 14, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 ("AEA"), asserting that gang members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua are part of an "invasion" of the US threatening its citizens. The old statute gives a president power during war time to arrest and detain persons from a country with whom the US is at war. Of course, the US is currently not at war, although Trump is attempting to claim it.

The ACLU and Democracy Forward filed suit on Saturday, March 15, and sought an immediate temporary restraining order to block Trump's attempted use of the AEA.  The named plaintiffs in the suit were Venezuelans who had been moved to an ICE facility in south Texas and told they would be deported within hours. None were members of Tren de Aragua according to their statements. The suit was also brought as a class action on behalf of all Venezuelans whom Trump might attempt to deport under the AEA.

District of Columbia federal district judge James E. Boasberg held a virtual hearing on Saturday, and first granted a temporary restraining order against the removal of the five named plaintiffs in the suit, and later expanded his order to all Venezuelans who could be impacted by Trump's attempted use of the Alien Enemies Act.  While the judge was issuing the order, the Trump administration had planes full of Venezuelans taking off from Texas, and did not turn them around until they had reached El Salvador and unloaded their human cargo.

Adam Isaacson of WOLA has this detailed timeline of the court proceedings and when the removal flights to El Salvador via Honduras were in the air.  Bukele responded to the timing on X with "Oopsie.. Too late 😂"

 


In fact it was not too late, the order was in the hands of the government before any of the planes had landed in El Salvador, and the government simply ignored the order, claiming it had no force once the planes were out of US airspace. (The judge has told the government to explain its actions in a hearing set for 5 p.m. EDT on Monday).

Bukele's media production team was waiting in El Salvador for the arrival of the planes Saturday night, and filmed the shackled men being hustled off to buses, surrounded by military and security forces, and then showed their delivery into the CECOT prison. Within hours, Bukele was tweeting about the arrival of the Venezuelans along with a dark video:



On social media Donald Trump responded "Thank you El Salvador, and in particular, president Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation..."

Marco Rubio replied to Bukele's post "Thank you for your assistance and friendship President Bukele."

Bukele's post states that all 238 persons on the flight were immediately sent to CECOT. However, reporting by Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News indicates that only 137 were alleged Tren de Aragua gang members and the remainder were deported under "regular immigration law," suggesting that they may have been undocumented and with final removal orders, but not necessarily persons who had been charged with, much less convicted, of any crime.   All of them have been "disappeared" into the Salvadoran prison system without any word from the US government of the identity of the Venezuelans or the individualized basis for their detention and removal.

The Washington Post wrote on Sunday:
The high-profile actions make it clear that the administration will deploy force and fright to remove immigrants from the United States, even if they have to devise extraordinary new ways to do it, such as sending them to a country that is not their home country and putting them in jail.

The White House’s online mocking of the judicial order by the chief federal judge in Washington added to the concern among advocates that Trump’s determination to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history would sidestep legal and humanitarian norms.
There is one other part of this story which the US press has not focused on.   Included in the deportation flights according to the US government and Nayib Bukele were 23 Salvadoran members of MS-13, including César Humberto López Larios, alias ‘Greñas de Stoners’.  The return of López Larios is significant.   He was one of the members of the "Ranfla Nacional" or top leadership group of MS-13 in El Salvador.   He was included in an indictment brought by a US Justice Department task force formed under the first Trump administration to pursue the gang.  Along with other members of the Ranfla, López Larios faced federal terrorism charges until this weekend when the indictment against him was dismissed, and he was deported to El Salvador this weekend on the flights with the Venezuelans.



According to reporting in in Redaccion Regional, López Larios was one of the members of the Ranfla in prison in El Salvador when Nayib Bukele was negotiating with the gangs for reduction in homicides in the country.  A Salvadoran court ordered him released from prison in October 2020, for reasons which are not entirely clear, and he fled El Salvador.  He was captured in Mexico and turned over to the FBI in June 2024.   El Faro has a profile of him here.

Photos from the Salvadoran government press office show López Larios being delivered into the confines of the CECOT mega-prison in the early morning hours of Sunday:


Bukele very much wants those MS-13 leaders like López Larios who are held in the US on terrorism charges to be returned to El Salvador. This was confirmed by his ambassador to the US, Milena Mayorga:
“What president (Bukele) did tell [Marco Rubio], and he was very blunt: ‘I want you to send me the gang leaders who are in the United States.’ He told him exactly: ‘We want them to be deported.’ I think it is a matter of honor.”
Bukele wants them back in El Salvador before they can testify in US courts about his negotiations with MS-13 to lower homicide levels in the country.  The return of López Larios into Bukele's hands is the first indication that the US Justice Department may be willing to end its prosecution of the MS-13 Ranfla in return for Bukele's offer to be Trump's offshore jailer.

** Disclosure ** When not involved in matters in El Salvador, I work as a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Wisconsin, an affiliate of the national ACLU.  The national ACLU is counsel to the plaintiffs in the suit challenging the application of the Alien Enemies Act.  Views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the ACLU.  

Comments

Post a Comment