More than 200 suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua landed in El Salvador’s high-security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) Sunday, deported by the U.S. under a Trump proclamation that’s already hit a legal snag.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed 238 alleged gangsters arrived, alongside 23 MS-13 members, in a deal costing the U.S. $6 million to house them for a renewable one-year stint.
President Donald Trump triggered the move Friday, dusting off the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to fast-track deportations of Tren de Aragua suspects—linked to kidnapping, extortion, and killings—bypassing standard immigration courts.
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“Oopsie…too late,” Bukele quipped on X, hinting flights took off before a federal judge in Washington, D.C., slapped a 14-day block on the law’s use Saturday, arguing it applies only to warlike acts by nations, not gangs.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pegged the deportee count at over 250, though exact timing remains murky.
The White House calls Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” threatening national security, but Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro slammed the “anachronistic” law as a rights violation.
The U.S. appealed the judge’s ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court late Saturday, setting up a showdown over Trump’s border playbook.
Meanwhile, Bukele touted the haul—$6 million plus intel on MS-13 ringleaders—as a triple win: fighting crime, aiding allies, and inching El Salvador’s $200-million-a-year prison system toward self-sustainability via his “Zero Idleness” labor program.
DHS and State Department officials stayed mum, leaving questions swirling about how many got out before the gavel fell—and what’s next for Trump’s deportation blitz.
For now, CECOT’s mega-prison, built for 40,000, has new tenants, and the U.S.-El Salvador pact is holding firm despite the courtroom curveball.
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