OUR AUTHORITARIAN FRIEND

Trump Impeded a DOJ Gang Case and Freed an MS-13 Leader to Help an Authoritarian Ally

Thanks to new reporting from the fearless El Salvadorian independent outlet, El Faro, we have solidly reported information that the Trump administration allegedly facilitated a cover-up of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s work with notorious gang MS-13. They have been all over this. You should read their incredible reporting. They are demonstrating how fearless and impactful a media outlet can be when Jeff Bezos doesn’t own it.

This new information appears to confirm previous reporting that the US government abetted Bukele’s political deals with MS-13 by deporting a vital MS-13 leader, Elmer Canales-Rivera, from US custody back to the Salvadoran gulag, the Terrorism Confinement Center, best known by its acronym, CECOT.

There’s more. The current administration declared MS-13 a terrorist organization on January 20, 2025. Yet, on March 15, they deported Elmer Canales-Rivera. He was a founder of MS-13’s highest governing council, Ranfla Histórica, and one of six gang members who had personally participated in Bukele’s negotiation with Salvadoran gangs.

There’s still more. When the US authorities arrested him – in 2023 – the US government said:

“We allege that Elmer Canales-Rivera, a founding member of MS-13’s ‘Twelve Apostles of the Devil,’ bears responsibility for the gang’s efforts over decades to terrorize communities, target law enforcement, and sow violence here in the United States and abroad,”

…“They directed acts of violence and murder in El Salvador, the United States, and elsewhere, established military-style training camps for its members and obtained military weapons such as rifles, handguns, grenades, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket launchers,” officials said in the release.

…“In order to extract those benefits and concessions from GOES [Government of El Salvador], MS-13 engaged in public displays of violence to threaten and intimidate civilian populations, targeted GOES law enforcement and military officials, and manipulated the electoral process in El Salvador,” the news release said. “Canales-Rivera played one of the most prominent roles in MS-13’s negotiations and agreements with the GOES.”

Of course, then Attorney General Merrick Garland also said, “The arrest of this high-ranking, longtime leader of MS-13 should serve as a warning to MS-13’s other leaders that the Justice Department will hold you accountable for your crimes.” Oops.

Aiding a long-time MS-13 ally would seem to be a crime - even if they rule a country. And helping that ruler to hide his collaboration with MS-13 may also be a crime. And springing the gang member who can prove it all from a US prison to a Central American gulag seems like it could also fall into the crime category.

Using CECOT as a legal end-run

By springing him from US custody, the White House probably wanted to prevent this man from testifying in a US court that the White House’s Salvadorian ally had a lengthy collaboration with MS-13.

As should be familiar by now, the Trump administration has created a new Guantamo, of sorts, for undesirables, by paying El Salvador’s authoritarian Bukele to house US deportees in his notorious CECOT. Americans only have so much capacity for outrage, and, because this scheme has produced some of the loudest ones thus far, the case of gang leader Élmer Canales Rivera, aka “Crook de Hollywood,” hasn’t gotten its due attention. Understandably, Americans’ concern for due process has garnered the headlines, but the CECOT affair is a Mary Poppins bag of scandals.

Were this a standalone issue, it would warrant front-page headlines. Mexico had deported Rivera to the US because he was an important MS-13 leader, and his information, in all likelihood, formed the basis for the Biden administration’s sanctions against Bukele’s advisors in December 2021. He awaited prosecution for, among other things, conspiracy to finance terrorism.

El Faro possessed leaked recordings of a Bukele administration official, the Orwellian-titled Director for the Reconstruction of Social Fabric, Carlos Marroquín, talking about how Bukele’s politically expedient deals with and then betrayals of El Salvador’s dangerous gangs had preceded a gang massacre.

Batman’s deal and then a massacre

Bukele would make deals with various gangs. In return for electoral support, it is reported that he gave gangs special favors, prison privileges, and even released some of their leaders. Marroquín, one of the chief negotiators of these deals, would relay information directly to Bukele using the codename “Batman.” Bukele released Rivera as part of one of these deals. Later, Mexico arrested him and deported him to the US.

When Bukele allegedly began reneging on his deals with the gangs, they revolted. In the words of El Faro:

High-ranking Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13) sources confessed to El Faro their responsibility for the killings of 87 people between March 25 and 27 in El Salvador, including 62 of them on March 26, the most violent day in the past two decades. Spokespersons for MS-13 revealed that the murders were carried out in response to what they call a “betrayal” by the administration of President Nayib Bukele of the covert pact that reduced homicides since 2019.

“They [the government] were doing things that they should not have done. That’s why there were 80 deaths on those days,” explained a leader of MS-13 who is outside El Salvador.

Bukele’s complicated relationship with these gangs stretched as far back as 2015, when he was mayor of San Salvador

Of course, even as the evidence piled up, Bukele denied this and appeared keen to hide any corroborating evidence.

Honor among thieves

That the US knew about Bukele’s gang alliances is undisputed. The US Justice Department mentioned it in a federal indictment of MS-13 leaders in New York, and the Treasury Department did, too.

But the Trump administration wanted to help Bukele at home. Not to mention, had they not spirited Crook de Hollywood out of US custody, they would have had the embarrassing spectacle of Rivera dragging up this whole history in a US court.

And Salvadoran Ambassador Milena Mayorga said that Bukele specifically requested the return of gang leaders from the US as a "point of honor."

Time for a noble defeat?

Let’s hope that some of the members of the House Oversight Committee are El Faro and Dekleptocracy Project readers, but this shouldn’t wait until 2026. Let’s face it, the DoJ isn’t going to address this, and neither will Congress.

But states can. The Trump administration is once again betting that state governments won’t act.

Did the White House’s actions impede any state prosecutions of an MS-13 leader? Some brave state attorney general, if there is one, should ask that question. New York and Maryland have taken aggressive, state-led action against MS-13 gang leaders.

Yes, I know, the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and intergovernmental immunity have created a powerful legal framework to prevent state interference with federal operations. But that was for policy fights, and we have traveled very far beyond disagreements over policy. Plus, I’ve read the Constitution a lot, and nowhere in there does it say the federal government gets to do illegal stuff. In fact, it exists to argue the opposite.

The core principle of that immunity framework is that it protects the lawful execution of federal responsibilities. In my view, this clearly was not. A blue state attorney general needs to charge the complicit federal officials with a crime, and, if the US government wants to make the case that all these actions were, in fact, legal, let them. The American people need to hear our aspiring authoritarian federal government speak clearly and plainly. And, if the Supreme Court wants to allow them to do this, they need to say so.