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Reporting Highlights
Investigation Impeded: Regardless of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s crime fighter popularity, his high aides blocked extraditions of MS-13 leaders to the U.S., officers say.
Cash Laundering Inquiry: U.S. brokers drew up a request to look at whether or not Bukele and senior officers had diverted USAID funds to assist out MS-13 gang members.
Salvadoran Allies Threatened: Regulation enforcement officers needed to flee El Salvador after dealing with harassment and threats from the nation’s authorities.
These highlights had been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down within the Oval Workplace with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to have fun a brand new partnership. They’d not too long ago negotiated a unprecedented deal during which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a most safety jail a whole lot of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, although few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. additionally despatched again accused members of the infamous Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which each the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist group.
Bukele’s presidency has been outlined by his profitable crackdown in opposition to MS-13. He has jailed tens of hundreds of alleged gang members, reworking one of many hemisphere’s most harmful nations into one in all its most secure. Though human rights teams have criticized his techniques, Bukele stays extraordinarily well-liked in El Salvador.
Throughout their assembly on the White Home, Trump praised his visitor as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We respect working with you since you need to cease crime and so will we.”
A protracted-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered proof at odds with Bukele’s popularity as a criminal offense fighter. The inquiry, which started as an effort to dismantle the gang’s management, expanded to give attention to whether or not the Bukele authorities minimize a secret cope with MS-13 within the early years of his presidency.
New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica reveals that senior officers in Bukele’s authorities repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. job drive because it pursued proof of potential wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inside circle.
Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. brokers seen as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran regulation enforcement officers who helped the duty drive, in keeping with unique interviews with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers, newly obtained inner paperwork and court docket information from each nations.
In a beforehand unreported improvement, federal brokers got here to suspect that Bukele and members of his inside circle had diverted U.S. help funds to the gang as a part of the alleged deal to offer it with cash and energy in change for votes and diminished murder charges. In 2021, brokers drew up a request to evaluate U.S. financial institution accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to search for proof of cash laundering associated to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The checklist of names assembled by the brokers included Bukele, senior officers and their relations, in keeping with paperwork seen by ProPublica.
“Data obtained by means of investigation has revealed that the people contained inside this submission are closely engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit enterprise the place MS-13 are concerned,” the brokers wrote. The folks on the checklist “are additionally believed to have been funding MS-13 to assist political campaigns and MS-13 have acquired political funds.”
The end result of the request shouldn’t be recognized, however its existence reveals that the U.S. investigation had widened to look at suspected corruption at excessive ranges of the Bukele authorities.
The investigation was led by Joint Process Drive Vulcan, a multiagency regulation enforcement group created at Trump’s request in 2019. Brokers discovered proof that the Bukele authorities tried to cowl up the pact by stopping the extraditions of gang leaders who confronted U.S. prices that embrace ordering the murders of U.S. residents and plotting to assassinate an FBI agent.
As well as, U.S. officers helped no less than eight of their counterparts in Salvadoran regulation enforcement flee the nation and resettle in the US or elsewhere as a result of they feared retaliation by their very own authorities, present and former U.S. officers stated.
It has been clear from the start what Trump desires from El Salvador: an ally who would settle for, and even imprison, deportees. Much less clear has been what Bukele would possibly need from the US. In hanging the cope with the Salvadoran president, Trump has successfully undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from additional scrutiny, present and former U.S. officers stated.
Veterans of the Vulcan group are “involved that every one their work, the hundreds of thousands of {dollars} that had been spent, going everywhere in the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, that it will likely be weakened for political causes,” stated a U.S. official acquainted with the investigation.
The duty drive labored carefully with the Salvadoran lawyer basic’s workplace, whose prosecutors shared proof from their very own investigation of the gang negotiations and suspected graft within the Bukele authorities, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers.
“There was good data on corruption between the gang and the Bukele administration,” Christopher Musto, a former senior official at Homeland Safety Investigations, or HSI, who labored on Vulcan, stated concerning the Salvadoran investigation. “It was an incredible case.”
In Might 2021, Bukele’s legislative majority in Congress ousted the lawyer basic and justices of the Supreme Court docket, which oversees extradition requests. Inside seven months, newly put in justices reversed or halted six requests for senior gang leaders needed within the U.S., in keeping with interviews and paperwork.
“Bukele’s folks had been coming to the Supreme Court docket and saying not at all are we extraditing the MS-13 leaders,” stated the U.S. official acquainted with the investigation. “‘Delay, intervene, undermine, do what it’s a must to do.’”
Senior Bukele officers helped an MS-13 chief with a pending extradition order escape from jail, in keeping with court docket information, U.S. officers and Salvadoran information studies. Not less than three different high gang leaders had been launched from Salvadoran custody after the U.S. filed extradition requests for them, in keeping with Justice Division paperwork.
Printed accounts in the US and El Salvador have reported allegations that Bukele additionally pushed for the return of MS-13 leaders to forestall them from testifying in U.S. courts concerning the pact. Regardless of his authorities’s refusal to extradite gang bosses to the US, the Trump administration in March deported one MS-13 chief accused of terrorism. The Justice Division is now in search of to dismiss prices in opposition to a second chief, which might permit him to be despatched again to El Salvador, in keeping with latest court docket filings.
The Justice Division declined to remark in response to questions despatched by ProPublica. The State Division referred inquiries to the Justice Division.
A White Home spokesperson didn’t reply to detailed questions.
“President Trump is dedicated to retaining his guarantees to the American folks and eradicating harmful criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a menace to the American public,” stated Abigail Jackson, a White Home spokesperson. “We’re grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”
Bukele, the Salvadoran Ministry of International Affairs and the Salvadoran Supreme Court docket didn’t reply to lists of questions. Bukele has repeatedly denied making any settlement with MS-13. The Trump administration’s deportation of MS-13 members to El Salvador, he stated in a put up on X, will allow safety forces to dismantle the gang.
“This can assist us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the final remnants of MS-13, together with its former and new members, cash, weapons, medication, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors,” the put up stated.
President Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, throughout a gathering within the Oval Workplace in April 2025. Trump has praised Bukele as “one hell of a president.”
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Al Drago/The Washington Publish/Getty Pictures
“Simply Concern”
Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in February 2019, promising to struggle the nation’s ingrained political corruption and pervasive gang violence, which he referred to as “one of many best challenges” dealing with the nation.
Throughout his first time period, Trump additionally made MS-13 a high-profile foe, calling it “in all probability the meanest, worst gang on the planet.” In August 2019, Legal professional Normal William P. Barr created the Vulcan job drive, teaming federal prosecutors with brokers of the FBI, Homeland Safety Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and different companies. The purpose: Eradicate MS-13.
For many years, MS-13 has bedeviled regulation enforcement within the Americas with its huge attain, excessive violence and complicated tradition. The initials stand for “Mara Salvatrucha.” “Mara” means a swarm, whereas “salvatrucha” has been stated to confer with a intelligent Salvadoran, in keeping with interviews and an educational examine. The quantity represents the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M, in homage to the Mexican Mafia, the highly effective Southern California jail gang.
MS-13 emerged within the Eighties in Los Angeles amongst Salvadoran youths whose households had fled a bloody civil warfare. The gang expanded all through the diaspora and, because the U.S. deported planeloads of ex-convicts beginning within the Nineties, took root in El Salvador. Though a lot of the leaders had been serving sentences in El Salvador, a jailhouse council of 14 bosses, referred to as the “Ranfla,” used cellphones to micromanage legal actions in U.S. cities hundreds of miles away.
The gang developed a popularity for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims. Barr has referred to as it “a demise cult” during which violence is extra necessary than riches.
“It was like a really violent mom-and-pop operation the place the cousins and second cousins all need to be part of it,” stated Carlos Ortiz, who served because the HSI attaché in El Salvador from 2018 to 2024. “Minimal cash, in comparison with others. Though it’s a corporation, loads of it’s simply worry. Concern of the high-ranking bosses among the many remainder of the gang, that’s what drives it.”
Skilled with army weapons, MS-13 warred with safety forces in El Salvador, took over neighborhoods and generated one of many world’s worst murder charges, driving an exodus of immigrants paying homage to the Eighties. The Salvadoran Supreme Court docket designated the gang as a terrorist group in 2015.
The Vulcan job drive had about 30 members, together with prosecutors, brokers and analysts. Its director, John J. Durham, was a federal prosecutor within the Jap District of New York who had spent a decade pursuing MS-13 cliques on Lengthy Island. Members of the duty drive labored from bases across the nation and traveled to Mexico and Central America.
One of many founding investigators, Newark FBI agent Daniel Brunner, spoke fluent Spanish and had labored gangs for seven years. He grew to become a roving specialist offering experience, communications intelligence and court docket transcripts, generally in particular person and generally from a distance.
“Our thought was that Vulcan was like a SEAL Crew 6, getting in to assist the completely different districts construct instances,” Brunner, who’s now retired, stated in an interview.
Vulcan constructed on the longtime U.S. presence and intensive affect in El Salvador, the place the embassy has lengthy funded and skilled regulation enforcement companies. FBI brokers and others had been embedded as advisers in police anti-gang and murder models and labored with prosecution groups led by Legal professional Normal Raúl Melara.
The U.S. job drive modeled its technique on those used in opposition to Mexican cartels and Colombian narcoguerrillas: Break the facility of the MS-13 bosses by extraditing them to face trial and jail in the US.
On Jan. 14, 2021, six days earlier than the tip of the Trump administration, Durham and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray joined appearing Legal professional Normal Jeffrey A. Rosen when he introduced “the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment focusing on MS-13 and its command and management construction in U.S. historical past.”
Prosecutors charged the 14 members of the management council with main crimes together with conspiracy to assist and finance narcoterrorism. For greater than twenty years, the Ranfla ran a legal community in the US, Mexico and Central America that sanctioned the murders of Individuals and trafficked medication and arms, the indictment alleged.
The indictment contained a surprising cost: MS-13 bosses had taken the extraordinary step of giving an order, or “inexperienced gentle,” to assassinate an FBI agent working with native investigators in El Salvador. Embassy officers discovered of the menace and evacuated the agent, in keeping with interviews.
It’s extremely uncommon for Latin American legal teams to focus on a U.S. agent — they’ve discovered that it invitations an amazing regulation enforcement response. The assassination plot was an indication that the U.S. crackdown had rattled the gang chiefs, present and former officers stated.
Household and pals attend the burial of Justin Llivicura in 2017 on Lengthy Island, New York. Justin, a 16-year-old highschool scholar, was one in all 4 youngsters murdered in a park by members of MS-13.
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Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis through Getty Pictures
Vulcan on the Hunt
In conversations with American officers as president-elect, Bukele promised cooperation and welcomed their assist in opposition to gangs and graft, even in his personal Nuevas Concepts social gathering, in keeping with present and former U.S. officers.
At a press occasion concerning the Vulcan job drive in 2020, Trump asserted that previously El Salvador “didn’t cooperate with the US in any respect,” however now it had grow to be a robust regulation enforcement associate.
Already, although, there had been information accounts alleging that Bukele had minimize offers with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. Vulcan investigators shortly discovered proof that high aides to the brand new president had been negotiating a brand new pact with gang chiefs, in keeping with interviews.
For greater than a decade, MS-13’s management of the streets had made it a political drive. It might ship votes, ignite mayhem or impose order. A collection of politicians had held talks with gang leaders to hunt electoral assist and reductions in violence in return for improved jail situations and perks resembling prostitutes and big-screen televisions.
The Bukele authorities adopted a extra subtle bargaining technique, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers. Throughout secret conferences in prisons and different websites, the president’s emissaries supplied MS-13 leaders political energy and monetary incentives in the event that they lowered the murder price and marshaled assist for the Nuevas Concepts social gathering, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers and court docket paperwork.
The chief negotiator was Carlos Marroquín, a former rap artist and confidant of the president. Bukele had appointed him the director of a brand new Justice Ministry program referred to as “Reconstruction of the Social Cloth” that operated in impoverished communities.
Marroquín promised the Ranfla a central function in creating this system, management of neighborhood youth facilities, energy over city turf and different monetary and political advantages, in keeping with present and former U.S. officers, court docket paperwork and Treasury Division sanctions. Informants and communications intercepts indicated that a few of the sources going to MS-13 got here from U.S. authorities help, a violation of U.S. regulation, in keeping with interviews and paperwork.
“Cash was going from us, from USAID, by means of to this social material group,” a former federal regulation enforcement official stated. “They’re presupposed to be constructing issues and getting expertise and studying. It was funding the gangs.”
Vulcan additionally gained data from two extremely positioned Salvadoran officers concerned within the talks with MS-13. The officers supplied inside data to U.S. brokers concerning the negotiations, which they stated Bukele directed, in keeping with interviews.
The accumulating proof concerning the gang pact and the suspected misuse of U.S. funds spurred the duty drive to broaden its preliminary focus and goal alleged corruption within the Bukele authorities, present and former U.S. officers stated.
In April 2021, federal brokers ready an inventory of highly effective Salvadorans for a monetary evaluate by the U.S. Treasury Division. Bukele was one of many 15 names. So had been Marroquín; Osiris Luna, the director of the nationwide jail system and one other alleged organizer of the gang talks; Martha Carolina Recinos, the president’s chief of employees; and different political figures and their relations. The request requested the Treasury Division to seek for potential illicit transactions in any financial institution accounts held in the US by these on the checklist, in keeping with paperwork seen by ProPublica.
The Vulcan job drive was in search of proof in U.S. banks of cash laundering tied to the diversion of USAID funding by means of the gang pact, the paperwork confirmed. Brokers defined that the duty drive had “uncovered data that MS-13 members are in shut contact with politically uncovered individuals in El Salvador,” referring to outstanding authorities figures.
“The USAID funding is believed to have been laundered by the people submitted on this request,” who had been suspected of “facilitating, supporting and selling MS-13 by means of their official positions,” stated the request, which was seen by ProPublica.
Made below part 314A of the USA Patriot Act, the request for a canvass of U.S. banks requires that investigators present affordable suspicion reasonably than possible trigger, which is a better normal. The end result of the request is unknown. The Treasury Division declined to remark. U.S. prosecutors haven’t publicly accused Bukele and the others of crimes associated to USAID funds.
As U.S. investigators superior on this political course, they gained helpful data from the Salvadoran prosecutors who had been urgent their very own investigation of the gangs and the Bukele administration.
Identified in English as Operation Cathedral, their probe was as formidable and delicate because the U.S. one. Investigators had documented the key jailhouse offers with MS-13 and the official makes an attempt to cowl them up. In addition they pursued leads that exposed alleged widespread corruption involving the nation’s COVID-19 aid packages, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers and paperwork. Political tensions elevated because the Salvadoran prosecutors focused the president’s inside circle and raided authorities workplaces, clashing with police who tried to cease them from looking the Well being Ministry in one incident.
April 2021 was additionally when a delegation led by Legal professional Normal Melara got here to Washington to satisfy with leaders of Vulcan and different senior U.S. officers. The prosecutors laid out their case in opposition to outstanding figures within the Bukele authorities. The “spectacular” presentation, a former U.S. federal regulation enforcement official stated, cited movies, telephone intercepts and different proof exhibiting that Marroquín, prisons director Luna and others had clandestinely organized for presidency negotiators and gang leaders to enter and go away prisons, smuggled in telephones and destroyed logs of jail visits.
“Melara was very nervous due to the very excessive degree of the folks he was investigating,” a former U.S. federal regulation enforcement official stated.
Melara declined to remark, saying he doesn’t talk about his work as lawyer basic.
The Salvadoran director of prisons, Osiris Luna, proper, speaks at a police facility in San Salvador, El Salvador, in November 2021.
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Rodrigo Sura/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Interference
On Might 1, 2021 — quickly after Melara and his group met with U.S. investigators — the Salvadoran Legislature, managed by Bukele, voted to expel the lawyer basic and 5 justices on the Supreme Court docket.
The purge was a decisive step by Bukele to centralize energy. It drew worldwide condemnation. In El Salvador, critics denounced the president’s actions as a “self-coup.” On his Twitter web page, Bukele started calling himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”
For Vulcan, the expulsions marked a dramatic shift in its investigation. The Supreme Court docket justices had signaled their willingness to log off on some extraditions. Melara had been a useful ally who reportedly pledged to do “every part obligatory” to extradite the Ranfla members, a lot of whom had been in custody in El Salvador. But it surely quickly grew to become clear that the federal government was not interested by handing over senior gang leaders.
“The subsequent prosecutors weren’t keen to work with us,” stated Musto, the previous HSI official. “We weren’t closed out, however all these items that we had in place that we had been shifting to getting folks again right here slowed all the way down to a snail’s tempo.”
The primary conflict came visiting Armando Melgar Diaz, an alleged MS-13 chief who acted as a intermediary between gangs in the US and senior leaders in El Salvador. Melgar, referred to as “Blue,” had ordered the kidnapping of a household in Oklahoma that owed the gangs $145,000, collected cash from a drug ring working out of eating places in Maryland and Virginia and was concerned with killings within the U.S., in keeping with an indictment and interviews with U.S. officers. He was the primary MS-13 member to be accused below terrorism legal guidelines.
The newly constituted Supreme Court docket voted to approve Melgar’s extradition however then reversed its determination, asserting that the matter wanted additional examine. Later, Bukele’s new lawyer basic requested for a halt to the extradition. The rationale: The USA had failed to ensure that it might not search the demise penalty or life in jail, sentences not allowed below Salvadoran regulation.
The rationale made no sense to Vulcan prosecutors. The Justice Division had already promised that it might not pursue such punishments in opposition to Melgar, in keeping with information and interviews. U.S. and Salvadoran officers attributed the sudden reversal to worry that Melgar might hyperlink Bukele and his authorities to the pact with MS-13.
“Melgar Diaz was going to be the check case,” Musto stated. “It was going to be a straightforward win for Vulcan.”
Data obtained by U.S. brokers included allegations that Bukele’s judicial adviser, Conan Castro-Ramírez, had referred to as one of many new Supreme Court docket justices and instructed him to search out methods to cease the extradition of Melgar, in keeping with interviews. When the justice objected, saying that the extradition had already been permitted, Castro allegedly ordered him to reverse it. “That’s why we put you there,” he stated, in keeping with the interviews.
The State Division sanctioned Castro for his function in aiding within the “inappropriate removing” of the Supreme Court docket justices and the lawyer basic. Castro didn’t reply to makes an attempt to contact him.
A Salvadoran court docket sentenced Melgar to 39 years in jail for conspiracy to commit murder, amongst different crimes. He was the primary MS-13 chief whose extradition was blocked. Quickly after, the U.S. extradition requests for different gang chiefs bumped into opposition.
“Bukele and his authorities are utilizing the complete state equipment to forestall these folks from being extradited,” an individual with data of the Salvadoran judicial system stated in a latest interview.
Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a newly appointed Supreme Court docket justice who reportedly had served as a lawyer for a high MS-13 chief, made certain that the requests had been by no means granted, in keeping with the particular person with data of El Salvador’s judicial system. Flores instructed colleagues “don’t work on extraditions in any respect,” the particular person stated.
In July 2022, El Salvador agreed to extradite two lower-ranking MS-13 members charged with the murders of Salvadoran immigrants in Lengthy Island in 2016 and 2017 during which victims had been butchered with axes and machetes. The Supreme Court docket additionally permitted the return of Salvadorans not affiliated with the gang who had been accused within the U.S. of crimes resembling homicide.
This was a deliberate technique, the particular person stated. Flores stated that El Salvador wanted to proceed some extraditions with a view to “calm” U.S. officers, who had been complaining concerning the lack of cooperation with Vulcan, the particular person stated. (Flores died in 2023.)
It didn’t work. The extradition of different criminals by the Bukele-aligned Supreme Court docket solely emphasised the shortage of cooperation on requests for the senior MS-13 leaders.
“We had been by no means instructed formally that it wouldn’t occur, however it grew to become not possible,” stated Brunner, the previous FBI agent.
In October 2022, Bukele’s new lawyer basic introduced that criminals would first must serve their sentence in El Salvador earlier than being despatched to the U.S. — an interpretation of the nation’s extradition treaty that differed from the earlier Supreme Court docket.
“We aren’t going to be sending Salvadorans with out them first paying for the crimes they’ve dedicated” in El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado stated.
Threats and Roadblocks
The Bukele authorities’s interference with the U.S. investigation went past blocking extraditions, U.S. officers stated.
Senior Bukele allies additionally waged a marketing campaign of harassment and intimidation in opposition to the Salvadoran officers who had investigated corruption and assisted the Vulcan job drive, in keeping with interviews with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers.
The federal government threatened officers with arrest and despatched police patrols to their houses, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers. Not less than eight senior Salvadoran regulation enforcement and judicial officers fled El Salvador for the US and elsewhere. Vulcan supplied them with journey cash, language courses, housing and assist gaining authorized immigration standing and discovering jobs. In a single occasion, a U.S. Embassy official escorted a Salvadoran prosecutor in a foreign country as a result of American officers believed his life was at risk, in keeping with an official acquainted with the incident.
The Salvadoran authorities additionally weakened particular “vetted models” of the police that had labored with the FBI and different U.S. companies, in keeping with present and former U.S. officers.
Bukele’s allies didn’t cease there. They allegedly helped the escape or launch from jail of no less than 4 members of the MS-13 management council sought by Vulcan for alleged crimes within the U.S., in keeping with interviews, court docket paperwork and press studies.
Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “Criminal de Hollywood,” was one of the needed of the Ranfla members. He had been imprisoned for a number of murders in El Salvador, together with a case during which he reportedly helped suffocate and drown in insecticide a gang member who violated orders. In the US, prosecutors had accused him of orchestrating murders and kidnapping throughout the nation for greater than 20 years.
In November 2021, Canales escaped from jail. El Faro, a outstanding investigative information outlet, and different Salvadoran media revealed tales that detailed how Marroquín had escorted Canales from the jail. The articles featured taped calls between gang members and an individual recognized as Marroquín discussing his function within the escape, together with photographs of officers apparently making an attempt to take away jail logs to hide their presence on the jail.
Canales was caught in Mexico and turned over to U.S. authorities. At the moment in jail awaiting trial, he has pleaded not responsible.
Leaders of the MS-13 avenue gang learn the newspaper after a press convention at La Esperanza jail in San Salvador in 2013. Elmer Canales-Rivera, referred to as “Criminal de Hollywood,” proper, allegedly escaped from jail with the assistance of senior Salvadoran officers in 2021.
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Jose Cabezas/AFP through Getty Pictures
Over the subsequent a number of months, three different MS-13 leaders disappeared from Salvadoran prisons, inflicting Durham, the pinnacle of the duty drive, to precise his concern in a letter to the choose in New York overseeing the instances. On the time the Bukele administration had acquired extradition requests and Interpol notices, he wrote, the leaders had been in custody. Salvadoran media later reported that the nation’s Supreme Court docket had formally denied the extradition requests for the three males.
The purge of the Supreme Court docket and prosecutors, the blocked extraditions and the disappearance of the MS-13 gang members marked a big deterioration in relations between Bukele and the administration of President Joe Biden. Businesses throughout the federal government started in search of methods to push El Salvador to cooperate.
Performing U.S. Ambassador Jean Manes introduced a “pause” in relations with El Salvador and left the nation. A veteran diplomat who had beforehand served in El Salvador, Manes had pressured Bukele in private and non-private, criticizing the extradition delays and his more and more authoritarian rule, in keeping with State Division officers.
“What are we seeing now? It’s a decline in democracy,” Manes stated shortly earlier than her departure.
In December 2021, the Treasury Division issued sanctions in opposition to Bukele aides Luna, Marroquín and Recinos, blocking them from conducting monetary transactions in the US due to alleged corruption. None of them responded to questions despatched to a Bukele spokesperson.
Nonetheless, former members of the duty drive stated they felt that the Biden administration handled Vulcan as a decrease precedence and minimize its sources. They stated Biden officers noticed the duty drive as a Trump initiative and needed to give attention to different regulation enforcement targets, resembling human trafficking.
“As quickly because the Biden administration got here in, we had been slowed down,” Brunner stated. “There was much more purple tape we needed to undergo.” Former Biden officers denied this was the case.
No matter truce had existed between the Salvadoran authorities and MS-13 collapsed in March 2022. The nation descended into chaos. Over one three-day interval, some 80 folks had been killed in gang-related violence.
Bukele reacted forcefully. He declared a nationwide “state of exception” that suspended constitutional protections. Police started rounding up hundreds of accused gang members and others. He introduced the development of the megaprison referred to as CECOT.
The insurance policies proved tremendously well-liked. Homicide charges dropped dramatically, although human rights advocates criticized the lack of civil liberties. Bukele dismissed their complaints.
“Some say we have now put hundreds in jail, however the actuality is that we have now set hundreds of thousands free,” he has stated, an assertion he repeated to Trump within the Oval Workplace.
The Turnaround
Regardless of the tough remedy of gang members — an estimated 14,500 folks at the moment are held in CECOT — one factor didn’t change: The Bukele authorities continued to refuse to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the US.
The explanations for Bukele’s alleged safety of the gang management versus his relentless pursuit of the rank and file are the topic of hypothesis in each the US and El Salvador. One potential rationalization, in keeping with present and former U.S. and Salvadoran officers: Bukele is conscious that Vulcan was gathering proof that would result in legal prices and political harm. The imprisoned leaders are potential witnesses to his alleged cope with MS-13, whereas El Salvador’s street-level gangsters should not.
Police escort accused Venezuelans and Salvadorans after their deportation from the US to be held within the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador.
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El Salvador Press Presidency Workplace/Anadolu through Getty Pictures
In February 2023, the Justice Division unsealed an indictment for an additional group of leaders, most of whom operated a tier beneath the Ranfla, relaying its directives to gangsters on the streets. The 13 defendants had been accused of terrorism and drug smuggling, amongst different prices.
The U.S. introduced it might “discover choices for his or her extradition with the federal government of El Salvador.” The Justice Division declined to say whether or not any such requests had been made.
In submitting the fees, prosecutors made their strongest public accusations but about offers between the Bukele authorities and the gangs. With out naming the president or his allies, prosecutors alleged that MS-13 leaders agreed to make use of their huge political affect to end up votes for candidates belonging to Bukele’s Nuevas Concepts social gathering in legislative elections in 2021.
The gang bosses additionally “agreed to scale back the variety of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefited the federal government of El Salvador, by creating the notion that the federal government was decreasing the homicide price,” the indictment stated.
As a part of the association, the senior MS-13 leaders demanded that the Bukele authorities refuse to extradite them, the indictment stated. The alleged situation seems to be in impact. Up to now, not one of the extradition requests for greater than a dozen high-ranking gang members has been permitted.
Within the face of obstacles, Vulcan relied more and more on the Mexican authorities for assist. Through the previous 4 years, Mexican authorities have captured 9 of the 27 MS-13 leaders named within the indictments and deported them to the US, the place they had been arrested. This yr, prosecutors obtained responsible pleas to terrorism prices from two lower-ranking bosses, together with one who prosecutors stated had helped implement the deal between the Bukele administration and the gang. Sentencing for the lads is pending.
Since Trump took workplace this yr, his administration has redirected Vulcan’s mission to additionally goal Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the president has put within the highlight.
There was a exceptional latest improvement associated to MS-13, nonetheless. After greater than 5 years main the Vulcan job drive, Durham wrote letters asking the choose overseeing the instances to dismiss prices in opposition to two gang leaders in U.S. custody, permitting them to be deported to El Salvador. The letters had been dated March 11 and April 1, weeks after the Trump administration started negotiating the mass deportation cope with Bukele’s authorities.
César Humberto López Larios, a member of the Ranfla referred to as “Greñas,” had his prices dismissed and was returned to El Salvador with greater than 250 Venezuelans and Salvadorans despatched to CECOT as a part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants on March 15. López, recognized in media studies, is featured in a slickly produced video posted by Bukele on X, kneeling within the jail, his head shaved. He had pleaded not responsible to the fees in opposition to him.
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Then, in April, Durham requested for the dismissal of terrorism prices in opposition to a lower-ranking MS-13 prisoner, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, alias “Vampiro,” in keeping with not too long ago unsealed court docket information. His protection attorneys are in search of to stall the request to provide them time to struggle his deportation to El Salvador. He has pleaded not responsible.
Durham acknowledged in his letters to the choose that the proof in opposition to the 2 males is “robust.” After hundreds of thousands spent on an operation involving investigators and prosecutors from the U.S., El Salvador and different nations, Vulcan had amassed a trove of proof aimed toward incarcerating the MS-13 leaders who had overseen the killings, rapes and beatings of Individuals. Prosecutors instructed protection attorneys that they had greater than 92,903 pages of discovery, together with 600 pages of transcribed telephone intercepts, 21 bins of paperwork from prosecutors in El Salvador and 11 gigabytes of audio recordsdata.
Durham stated prosecutors had been dropping their pursuit of the instances “because of geopolitical and nationwide safety issues.”
It was like a reverse extradition. Trump was giving Bukele the sort of high-level criminals that the US had by no means acquired from El Salvador.
Through the negotiations over using El Salvador’s jail, Trump officers agreed to pay some $6 million to accommodate the deported males and acceded to a further demand.
Bukele had one particular request, in keeping with Milena Mayorga, his ambassador to the US.
“I would like you to ship me the gang leaders who’re in the US,” she quoted Bukele as telling U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
For Bukele, she stated in a broadcast interview, it was “a matter of honor.”
Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting, and Doris Burke contributed analysis.
