The Washington Post - House Democrat demands answers on deal to return MS-13 leaders to El Salvador
A key congressional Democrat is demanding answers from the Trump administration about a deal it reportedly struck with El Salvador’s president to send him several MS-13 gang leaders held in the United States, alleging it may have compromised several ongoing investigations and national security.
Citing media reports of that agreement, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked in a letter Monday to know what role President Nayib Bukele’s demands for the MS-13 leaders played in his willingness to take in more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants deported from the U.S. this year. The migrants’ transfer to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador has become one of the most controversial episodes of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
Garcia also asked Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem whether any of those MS-13 bosses had information that would have aided U.S. efforts to dismantle their criminal organization, one of the world’s most deadly, or to investigate corruption within Bukele’s government.
The Trump administration’s apparent willingness to give in to Bukele’s demands “not only undercuts ongoing federal investigations but also threatens U.S. national security,” Garcia wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
“If true, this surreptitious deal struck by the Trump administration has profound implications for the integrity of the United States justice system and national security,” Garcia wrote. “The Committee demands to understand whether U.S. officials facilitated the repatriation of MS-13 leaders to prevent them from cooperating with American prosecutors.”
The gang leaders were charged in a pair of cases playing out in federal court on Long Island that U.S. officials have described as “the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictments targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history.”
The indictments alleged that many of the accused had been directly involved in negotiating a truce with unnamed members of Bukele’s government to tamp down public gang killings in El Salvador to help the president’s party win a supermajority in 2021 legislative elections.
In exchange, according to one of the indictments, Salvadoran officials offered the gang leaders cash and other perks, including improved prison conditions, control of territory and a commitment that El Salvador would deny U.S. requests to extradite them.
“In effect,” Garcia wrote in his letter, “the Salvadoran government traded criminal impunity for political gain.”
In one instance, outlined in U.S. court filings, “high-level Salvadoran government officials” personally escorted one of the leaders sought by the U.S. from a Salvadoran prison, housed him in a luxury apartment, provided him with a gun and then drove him to the border with Guatemala to be smuggled out.
That man — Elmer Canales Rivera, also known as “Crooks” — was later apprehended in Mexico and sent to the United States in 2023. He and the other MS-13 leaders are incarcerated in New York, awaiting trial on an array of narcoterrorism charges.
Prosecutors have said Canales Rivera was one of the lead negotiators of MS-13’s alleged deal with the Bukele government. His eventual trial in New York is likely to include evidence about those talks that could prove politically damaging to Bukele.
Reuters reported in late 2021 that U.S. authorities under the Biden administration also had been preparing indictments against two senior Bukele administration officials accused of spearheading the alleged secret deal with the gang.
Bukele has denied any cooperation between his government and MS-13. His ambassador in Washington, Milena Mayorga, said in March that Bukele’s request for the gang leaders to be returned to El Salvador was “a question of honor.”
So far, the Trump administration has sent back only one of the requested MS-13 leaders: César Humberto López Larios, known as “Greñas,” or “Shock” in Spanish. The Justice Department sought dismissal of its charges against him in March, and four days later, he was flown out of the country with the first Venezuelans sent to El Salvador as part of the deal between the Trump and Bukele administrations.
Weeks later, prosecutors moved to drop their case against a second man — Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, a gang member known as “Vampiro” — citing “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations” and “geopolitical and national security concerns.”
But that dismissal has been held up for months by U.S. District Judge Joan M. Azrack, who has questioned what role the alleged agreement between Bukele and the Trump administration has played in prosecutors’ request. Arévalo’s attorneys say they fear their client will be “returned to El Salvador and be silenced by Bukele’s administration there.”
“My life is in very danger if I’m deported,” Arévalo wrote in a letter to the judge last month. “In my case, I will be tortured and desposed [sic] of.”
The Justice Department has declined to comment on its decisions to drop charges against López Larios and Arévalo or say whether it intends to send back any of the other MS-13 leaders Bukele seeks, including Canales Rivera.
Garcia, in his letter, asked the Trump administration to respond to his inquiries by early next month.