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Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly agreed to release confidential informants who were protected by the US government Reach agreement with the President of El Salvadorwho agreed indefinitely Detain dozens of Venezuelan exiles in brutal prisons.
This arrangement was started a few days before Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Deport alleged Venezuelan gang membersGranted the administration access to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, condemned by human rights groups as a “tropical Gulag” and concentration camp, which has been the center of the president’s first wave of attacks. Mass deportation agenda.
In a phone call on March 13, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to the deal on the condition that the MS-13 gang members Bukele wanted imprisoned in his prison were actually “informants” protected by the Justice Department. according to Washington Post.
Rather than reject the idea, Rubio agreed to talk Attorney General Pam Bondi into waiving those protections, adding another layer to a secret agreement exposed in court documents and reporting in the wake of a months-long ordeal that ultimately led to a prisoner swap and the release of 250 Venezuelans from CECOT to their home country this summer. to be done.
“Americans elected President Trump because they were tired of politicians making excuses,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement. Independent.
“The results of the Trump administration speak for themselves,” he said. [Tren de Aragua] Gang members have returned to Venezuela. American hostages are at home. MS-13 gang members are being prosecuted in the US and El Salvador. And as a result of these incredible efforts, Americans are safer.
In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act in March, Trump said that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua]Those who are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States, may be apprehended, detained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.
But government officials later acknowledged that “many” of them did not have criminal records, and many were in the country with legal permission and were scheduled to appear in court on their asylum claims.
A top judge in Washington, DC, ordered the Trump administration to turn over the planes in an emergency lawsuit after learning that officials were taking people to El Salvador. The administration objected, sparking an extraordinary legal battle in which Trump himself sought to impeach the judge.
according to Washington PostThe White House feared that the exact same situation would occur if Venezuelans were not deported quickly.
Trump repeatedly called Rubio about the deal while the secretary was on a multi-day visit to Saudi Arabia and Canada earlier this year, the newspaper reported.
While Trump sought a foreign country to facilitate his mass deportation plan, Bukele needed support from the Justice Department to legitimize his leadership against global criticism for his threats to civil liberties. Post noted.
Bukele appears to have upheld his end of the bargain, effectively acting as a brutal pass-through for Venezuelan exiles. But only one of the nine people Bukele had sought was sent to El Salvador.
It is unclear whether they can fight a legal battle to stop their deportation.
But former Justice Department officials appear frustrated that the Trump administration will effectively blow up cases involving alleged gang members whose investigations law enforcement spent years trying to win over as collaborators.
“It would be very disappointing if I worked so hard for a year to gather that evidence … to detain him, to bring him to justice, just to have the Justice Department or the State Department turn around and say, ‘Okay we’re going to drop all charges,'” said Daniel Bruner, a former FBI agent who served on the joint task force investigating MS-13.
“It would bother me as a case agent,” he said. Washington Post.
After being transported from immigration detention centers to CECOT in the middle of the night, approximately 250 Venezuelan men were shackled and mass-rode into a brutal maximum-security prison, where their heads were shaved, and then put into prison cells, where they remained for more than five months.
They were not allowed to speak to families or lawyers. He never stepped out.
For months, government lawyers and administration officials claimed that the United States did not have jurisdiction over deportees held in El Salvador. But court filings revealed that officials from that country told the UN that “legal responsibility for these individuals rests exclusively with the US government”.
Despite the administration’s claims that those deported are no longer the responsibility of the United States, it appears that officials are using them as a bargaining chip in a prisoner exchange.
On 18th July, Following trilateral talks with the US, Salvadoran and Venezuelan governmentsMore than 250 Venezuelans jailed inside the facility were repatriated to their home country, and Several Americans were returned to the United States from Venezuelan custody.
In trials and interviews after his releaseThe men revealed the “physical, verbal and psychological abuse” they suffered, including regular beatings by guards with their fists and batons.