The US has claimed more than 250 Venezuelans to be gang members in El Salvador despite a US judge’s ruling to halt flights on Saturday after Donald Trump controversially evoked alien enemy law.
El Salvador President Naive Buquere said 238 members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 members of Salvadora gang MS-13 had arrived and had been detained as part of a deal the US pays to the Central American country to hold them in a capacity of 40,000 “Terroris Supervisory Center.”
The confirmation is a wartime authority that allows the president’s broad leeway on policy and enforcement actions, a wartime authority, after a US federal judge expanded his decision to temporarily block the Trump administration from invoking alien enemy law.
US District Judge James Boasberg attempted to suspend the deportation of all individuals deemed entitled to be eligible for removal under Trump’s declaration issued Friday. Boasberg has also already ordered deportation flights back to the United States.
“Oopsie…too late,” Bukel posted online, followed by a laughing emoji.
Shortly after Buquel’s statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked the leader of El Salvador.
“Thank you to your aid and friendship, President Buckel,” he wrote on social media site X, following a previous post in which the United States sent “21 most wanted people facing justice in El Salvador, in addition to two dangerous top MS-13 leaders.”
Rubio added: “more than 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua, who agreed to hold a very good prison at a fair price to save taxpayers’ dollars.”
On Friday, Trump summoned the alien enemy laws and ordered the deportation of suspicious members of the Venezuelan gang. Last month, the US officially designated Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
He claimed that gang members were “engaging in irregular wars and hostile actions” against the United States.
Alien Enemy Law was used only three times before during World War II, when it was used to incarcerate Germans and Italians and for the mass internment of Japanese-American civilians.
It was originally passed by Congress in preparation for what the United States believed was an imminent war with France. It was also used during the war of 1812 and World War I.
US Attorney General Pam Bondy has condemned Judge Boasberg’s deportation. “The order ignores the established authority over President Trump’s power and puts the public and law enforcement at risk,” Bondy said in a statement Saturday night.
But lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union argue that Trump is not a recognized nation and does not have the authority to use the law against criminal gangs.
On Sunday, Republican Sen. Minecround questioned whether the deportation service ignored Judge Boasberg’s order to turn around. “We’ll see if that actually happened,” the round told CNN. “I don’t know about the timing. We know we’re following the law.”
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El Salvador’s multi-million-dollar “terrorism confinement centre” is known by the Spanish acronym Cecot, and is the center of the highly controversial anti-gang repression of Buquere, where tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned since its launch in March 2022.
The 40,000 capacity “MegaPrison” opened in early 2023 and has since become an essential destination for right-wing Latin American populists eager to hone their crime fighting qualifications with voters. “This is how it goes. Argentina’s hard-line security minister, Patricia Brulich, went crazy last year after posing outside a packed cell in Secott.
A series of social media influencers and foreign journalists were also invited to document the tough situation and helped Bukere to promote his clampdown.
“The conditions there are like things you’ve never seen before. They differ on either side of the argument you fall into, and it’s the ultimate deterrent, or it’s human rights abuse,” Australian television journalist Liam Bartlett reported after a recent visit to the “Hellhall” prison in El Salvador.
“There are no sheets (and) no mattresses. (Prisoners) sleep in cold steel frames, they eat the same meals every day. Cooking utensils are prohibited, so use your hands (eat). Each of these large cells has two open toilets, and the lights remain 24/7,” added Bartlett. “Imagine how long you will last under these conditions.”
Human rights activists have condemned how massive incarceration took place without legal proceedings. More than 100 prisoners have died behind bars since Bukel’s clampdown began.
Neither the US nor El Salvador provided immediate evidence that the scores for Venezuelan prisoners sent to Secott this weekend were in fact gang members or were convicted of a crime.
