Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that the United States had sent 10 members of two gangs — MS-13, which originated in the United States and operates in South America, and Tren de Aragua, rooted in Venezuela — to El Salvador late Saturday.
Mr. Rubio added in a social media post that “the alliance” between President Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador had “become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador at the invitation of Mr. Bukele, who is positioning himself as a crucial regional ally to Mr. Trump and is scheduled to meet with the president in Washington on Monday.
The administration has portrayed those deportees as violent criminals or terrorists, but court papers have shown that the evidence on which the government acted was often little more than whether they had tattoos or had worn clothing associated with the criminal organization.
Mr. Bukele has become Latin America’s most popular leader for his takedown of gangs, even as he has suspended civil liberties and been accused by U.S. prosecutors of secretly negotiating with the same gangs.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bukele, Wendy Ramos, did not immediately respond to a request for information on the 10 deportees Mr. Rubio referred to.
In early February, Mr. Rubio announced a possible deal with Mr. Bukele, under which the Salvadoran government would hold convicted criminals in its prison system, for a fee. The administration began sending groups of detainees to El Salvador in mid-March, and has so far sent at least five flights carrying Venezuelan and Salvadoran deportees to El Salvador.
The Salvadoran government has released videos and photos showing deportees being removed from planes and marched into a prison outside the capital, San Salvador, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
Some of the men have been removed from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime power dating to 1798, while others were removed under regular U.S. immigration law and had final deportation orders, according to the administration.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants using the Alien Enemies Act for now, overturning a lower court that had put a temporary stop to those deportations.
The decision represented a victory for the administration, though the ruling did not address the constitutionality of using the Alien Enemies Act to send the migrants to a prison in El Salvador. The justices instead issued a narrow procedural ruling, saying that the migrants’ lawyers had filed their lawsuit in the wrong court.
In a separate case, the Supreme Court ordered the administration on Thursday to take steps to return a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was legally in the United States but was sent to the prison in El Salvador in March as a result of what officials said was an administrative error. But the administration has defied an order by the federal judge handling Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case to provide a written road map of its plans to free him, and in a hearing on Friday, repeatedly stonewalled the judge’s efforts to get the most basic information about him.
On Saturday, a State Department official, Michael Kozak, told the Maryland judge in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case that the detainee was “alive and secure” and that, according to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, he was in being held in CECOT. The embassy has not responded to requests for information from The New York Times.
Following the Supreme Court’s order on Thursday, President Trump said that he would follow the directions of the court if it ordered him to “bring somebody back,” though the court’s ruling indicated that the judiciary might not have the power to require the executive branch to do so.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump wrote of the deportees on Truth Social: “These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation. And their future is up to President B and his Government.”
President Bukele, who posted a photo on social media that day indicating that he was on his way to Washington, has largely remained silent on Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case.
Eric Schmitt reported from Washington and Annie Correal from Panama City.
