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In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison, Secretary of State Marco Rubio privately promised El Salvador’s president that the United States would hand over nine imprisoned MS-13 leaders — even though several were confidential informants working with U.S. law enforcement.
According to officials familiar with the March 13 phone call, Rubio assured Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that Attorney General Pam Bondi would terminate Justice Department agreements protecting those men. That assurance, sources said, was key to securing Bukele’s consent for the mass deportations that became one of the most controversial cornerstones of President Donald Trump’s early months back in office.
The deal, which has not been fully detailed until now, and was first reported by The Washington Post, shows how far the Trump administration went to satisfy Bukele’s demands as it sought access to El Salvador’s massive “Terrorism Confinement Center,” known as CECOT — a sprawling facility that has become central to Trump’s pledge to carry out the “largest deportation in American history.”
For Bukele, the exchange offered a chance to reclaim figures who could expose alleged secret deals between his government and MS-13, the transnational gang blamed for decades of murders and drug trafficking. For Trump, the partnership gave him a foreign ally willing to accept deportees regardless of nationality or legal status.
But Rubio’s promise to send protected informants back to El Salvador outraged U.S. law enforcement officials and risked undermining years of cooperation with witnesses in organized crime cases.
“The deal is a deep betrayal of U.S. law enforcement, whose agents risked their lives to apprehend the gang members,” said Douglas Farah, a U.S. contractor who worked with federal agents investigating MS-13. “Who will ever trust the word of U.S. prosecutors again?”
At least three of the nine men Bukele requested had provided incriminating information about members of his own government suspected of cutting deals with MS-13, officials said. One of them, César López Larios — charged in 2021 with directing MS-13’s U.S. operations — was deported to El Salvador just two days after Rubio’s call. The other eight remain in U.S. custody as their deportations face court challenges.
A State Department spokesman, Tommy Pigott, defended the deal, calling it “an unprecedented success” that made “Americans safer.” The Justice Department, through spokesman Gates McGavick, said it was “proud to collaborate” with the State Department on “dismantling international criminal organizations.”
Bukele’s office did not respond to requests for comment. But Damian Merlo, a lobbyist for the Salvadoran government, defended the arrangement: “These are Salvadoran terrorists, and they belong in Salvadoran prisons, not in what would be considered a posh U.S. facility.”
The deal and its fallout
Rubio’s central role underscores his transformation from one of Trump’s early Republican critics into one of his most powerful foreign policy enforcers. Fluent in Spanish and well-connected in Latin America, Rubio became instrumental in executing Trump’s hardline agenda in the region, from mass deportations to restructured asylum deals.
At the time of the Bukele negotiations, Trump was pressing for the immediate removal of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants detained under his immigration orders. White House officials feared that federal judges might block the transfers unless another country accepted the deportees. Bukele’s cooperation solved that problem.
In exchange, Bukele sought the return of nine top MS-13 figures — several of whom had begun cooperating with the U.S. Justice Department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, a high-level team that spent years building cases against the gang’s leadership. Prosecutors warned that sending those informants back would effectively endanger them and cripple ongoing investigations.
“This is how you destroy a network built on trust,” said one former DOJ official. “Informants agree to risk their lives because they believe the United States will protect them. If that protection disappears, so do future witnesses.”
The investigations
The task force’s 2021 indictment had charged López Larios and a dozen others with running a “continuing criminal enterprise” linking MS-13 leaders in El Salvador to violent cells in the United States. A second indictment, unsealed in 2022, alleged that unnamed members of Bukele’s administration had struck secret pacts with gang leaders to reduce murders in exchange for political support.
Those allegations were politically explosive in El Salvador. The Bukele government denied them outright, calling them “lies invented by corrupt prosecutors.” But soon after, at least four top MS-13 figures charged by U.S. prosecutors were quietly released from Salvadoran custody — including Elmer Canales Rivera, known as “Crook de Hollywood,” who was later re-arrested in Mexico and extradited to the United States.
Once in U.S. custody, Canales Rivera agreed to cooperate, offering prosecutors evidence that he said linked Bukele’s officials to secret negotiations with MS-13. According to investigators, he turned over photos, recordings and documents that tied senior Salvadoran officials — including social welfare chief Carlos Marroquín and Deputy Justice Minister Osiris Luna — to the alleged gang talks. Neither official responded to multiple requests for comment.
“If he’s sent back to El Salvador, the entire case could fall apart,” said a current U.S. investigator familiar with the probe.
Judicial backlash and continuing fallout
On March 11, the Justice Department abruptly moved to dismiss its case against López Larios, citing “geopolitical and national security concerns.” U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack approved the request — only to later express regret as media reports revealed the political nature of the deal.
“I should not have accepted those assurances without greater transparency,” Azrack said in a subsequent hearing, refusing to immediately drop charges against another MS-13 defendant, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, known as “Vampiro,” whose deportation remains on hold. Arévalo Chávez has told the court that deportation would mean certain torture or death.
Bukele has complained that the U.S. still hasn’t delivered all nine men promised under Rubio’s deal. Inside the Justice Department, several officials have resisted efforts to deport the remaining MS-13 members, calling the plan “a betrayal of the badge.”
“It would gut me as a case agent,” said Daniel Brunner, a former FBI investigator who worked on the Vulcan task force. “We fought to get these people into custody, only for Washington to turn around and hand them over.”
Though the Justice Department’s investigation into Bukele’s alleged gang ties technically continues, current and former officials say resources have been quietly diverted elsewhere.
“No one wants to touch it,” said a former State Department official stationed in San Salvador. “The Bukele administration has a direct line to the White House — and that means this story is being buried.”
