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The US has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House.
“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Rubio said in an Twitter/X post.
Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador.
The alliance between @POTUS and President @nayibbukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.
The alliance between Donald Trump and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”, Rubio added.
The US president is due to meet Bukele at the White House on Monday.
Trump said on Saturday he was looking forward to meeting Bukele and praised him for taking “enemy aliens” from the United States. He said the two countries were working closely to “eradicate terrorist organizations”.
Administration officials have repeatedly made public statements alleging that detained immigrants are gang members that they have not backed up in court.
The Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were. The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to Tren de Aragua, which it labels a terrorist organization.
The deportations have been challenged in federal court. The US supreme court said the US government must give sufficient notice to immigrant detainees to allow them to contest their deportations. It did not say how those already in El Salvador could seek judicial review of their removals.
The White House has come under fire recently after a Maryland man was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. He was deported on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador made up chiefly of Venezuelans whom the government had accused of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.
Trump administration lawyers were able to confirm on Saturday that Kilmar Abrego García, 29, remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador. However, the White House did not detail the steps it was taking to return Abrego García to the United States.
