The United States has sent over 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to be imprisoned in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele said Sunday (March 16, 2025), after U.S. counterpart Donald Trump invoked wartime authorities to expel migrants.
Mr. Trump signed an order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on Friday, but it was not publicly announced until Saturday.
The wartime authority allows a President to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation, but has been invoked only three times before during major international conflicts, including World War I and II.
Civil rights groups sued to block the order, with a federal judge on Saturday granting a temporary suspension of the order, apparently as planes were already headed to El Salvador.
“Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country,” Mr. Bukele said Sunday morning on X, sharing a video of several men in handcuffs and shackles being transferred from a plane to a heavily guarded convoy.
Mr. Bukele, in a meeting last month with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had offered to house prisoners from the United States in his country.
The iron-fisted leader has seen soaring popularity in his Latin American country for a successful crackdown on criminal groups, but has faced criticism from human rights groups.
He said in his post that the alleged gang members had been sent to the country’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Mr. Rubio said in a separate statement Sunday that “hundreds of violent criminals were sent out of our country.”
“I want to express my sincere gratitude to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador for playing a pivotal role in this transfer,” Mr. Rubio said.
He added that as part of the transfer, the United States had also sent two “top leaders” of another gang, MS-13, to El Salvador, “plus 21 of its most wanted to face justice in their homeland.”
Mr. Trump, in his order, said Tren de Aragua is “conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime.”
The statement gives Mr. Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi 60 days to enact the ruling making all Tren de Aragua gang members “subject to immediate apprehension, detention and removal.”
The detention and expulsion order will apply to all Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members who are over 14 and not naturalized U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
But the ACLU and an allied group, Democracy Forward, asked the U.S. District Court in Washington to bar the deportations — arguing that the 1798 act was not intended for use in peacetime.
Judge James Boasberg on Saturday issued to a 14-day halt to any deportation under the new order.
Bondi slammed the ruling, saying in a statement that it “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.”
Published – March 16, 2025 07:39 pm IST
