US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that 10 “criminals” from two Latin American gangs had arrived in El Salvador, a key ally in Washington’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
The deportees were “from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” Rubio wrote on X, a day before Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is due in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump.
Trump and Bukele have become close partners, with the Salvadoran agreeing to accept hundreds of migrants deported from the United States as criminals — mostly alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua or the Salvadoran MS-13 gang.
Attorneys for a number of the men say they have never been convicted of a crime, and that some were linked to the gangs merely by their tattoos.
The deportations have been questioned by Democrats and rights groups who say migrants are being sent to a notoriously harsh Salvadoran prison without due process.
One case has drawn particular criticism — that of a Salvadoran man who was deported despite a federal court ruling in 2019 that he could not be expelled to El Salvador, where his life could be in danger.
The Trump administration has been slow-walking its response to court orders — including from the Supreme Court — to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The administration has never clearly explained its difficulty in bringing Abrego Garcia back, except to say he is now under Salvadoran control.
Rights activists have denounced the harsh conditions at El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison that is housing the US deportees at American cost.
Bukele had the facility built — with a capacity of up to 40,000 inmates — amid an aggressive fight against gang violence in El Salvador.
The US Supreme Court last week handed Trump a victory, lifting a lower court order barring the deportation of undocumented Venezuelans using an obscure 1798 law, which has only previously been used during wartime.
But it made clear that the potential deportees must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal.