By SEUNG MIN KIM and MARCOS ALEMÁN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is hosting Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, at the White House on Monday as the small Central American nation becomes a critical linchpin of the U.S. administration’s mass deportation operation.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country’s notorious maximum-security gang prison just outside of the capital, San Salvador. It is also holding a Maryland man who the administration admits was wrongly deported but has not been returned to the U.S., despite court orders to do so.
That has made Bukele, who remains extremely popular in El Salvador due in part to the crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs, a vital ally for the Trump administration, which has offered little evidence for its claims that the Venezuelan immigrants were in fact gang members, nor has it released names of those deported.
Asked whether he has any concerns about the prison there where deportees are being held, Trump told reporters early Sunday that Bukele was doing a “fantastic job.”
“He’s taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn’t be able to take care of from cost standpoint,” Trump said. “And he’s doing really, he’s been amazing. We have some very bad people in that prison. People that should have never been allowed into our country.”
Since Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in February, Bukele — whose government has arrested more than 84,000 people as part of his three-year crackdown on gangs — has made it clear he’s ready to help the Trump administration with its deportation ambitions.
Bukele struck a deal under which the U.S. will pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a year. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to turn around a flight carrying the immigrants already en route to El Salvador, Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie … too late.”
Though other judges had ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law, to deport the immigrants. The justices did insist that the immigrants get a court hearing before being removed from the U.S. Over the weekend, 10 more people who the administration claims are members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs arrived in El Salvador, Rubio said Sunday.
“We’ve also found cooperation in other countries that are willing to take some of these people, some very dangerous criminals,” Rubio said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. Bukele, Rubio added, “has really been a good friend to the United States in that regard. These are some of the worst people you’ll ever encounter.”
Trump has said openly that he would also favor El Salvador taking American citizens who have committed violent crimes, although he added, “I’d only do according to the law.” It is unclear how lawful U.S. citizens could be deported elsewhere. Leavitt said such citizens would be “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has called for the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident and Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears of gang persecution. Leavitt said the administration’s job is “to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” but Trump indicated later Friday that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. if the high court’s justices said to bring him back.
“I have great respect for the Supreme Court,” Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One. Government lawyers indicated in a legal filing Saturday that Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador but did not detail what, if any, steps the administration is taking to return him to the U.S. In its required daily status update on Sunday, the government essentially stated that it had nothing to add beyond Saturday’s filing.
Stephen Miller, a top White House aide, signaled on Monday that the U.S. president wouldn’t be asking Bukele to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
“It’s up to El Salvador and to the government and the people of El Salvador what the fate of their own citizens is,” he said. “We can’t extradite citizens of foreign countries to our country over the objection of those countries.”
While Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has popular support, the country has lived under a state of emergency that suspends some basic rights for three years. He built the massive prison, located just outside San Salvador in the town of Tecoluca, to hold those accused of gang affiliation under his crackdown.
Part of his offer to receive the Venezuelans there was that the U.S. also send back some Salvadoran gang leaders. In February, his ambassador to the U.S., Milena Mayorga, said on a radio program that having gang leaders face justice in El Salvador was “an issue of honor.”
Bukele could also seek relief from the 10% tariff recently imposed by Trump, using the argument that it weakens the economy Bukele is trying to bolster.
César Ríos, director of the El Salvador Immigrant Agenda Association, said “it’s crucial that (the visit) isn’t limited to diplomatic gestures, but rather translates to concrete actions that benefit Salvadorans abroad and at home.”
Populists who have successfully crafted their images through media, Bukele and Trump hail from different generations but display similar tendencies in how they relate to the press, political opposition and justice systems in their respective countries.
Bukele came to power in the middle of Trump’s first term and had a straightforward relationship with the U.S. leader. Trump was most concerned with immigration and, under Bukele, the number of Salvadorans heading for the U.S. border declined.
Bukele’s relationship with the U.S. grew more complicated at the start of the Biden administration, which was openly critical of some of his antidemocratic actions. Trump has also shown some irritation with Bukele in the past, accusing El Salvador of lowering its crime rate by sending people to the U.S.
“He’s just, ‘we’re working with our people that are causing problems and crime,’” Trump said of Bukele at a campaign rally last year. “He’s not working with them. He’s dumping them in the United States and their crime rate, their murder rate, is down 72%.”
Just before Bukele’s arrival in Washington, the State Department updated its travel advisory for El Salvador to Level 1, which is for countries that are considered the safest to visit for U.S. citizens. The advisory notes that gang activity, and the accompanying murders and other violent crimes, has declined in the past three years.
Alemán reported from San Salvador, El Salvador. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed reporting.
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