The 17 additional people the US shipped off to a prison in El Salvador on Sunday and accused of being tied to transnational gangs were sent there from immigration detention at Guantánamo Bay, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian on Monday afternoon.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the overnight military transfer, asserting that the group included “murderers and rapists” from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs, which the Trump administration has recently labeled foreign terrorists.
The 17 now-deported individuals were Salvadoran and Venezuelan nationals. Fox News was first to report the names and crimes allegedly committed that the White House has since confirmed.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted on social media that the deportees were “confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists”.
Immigration officials announced in mid-March they had removed all migrants being held at Guantánamo Bay and returned them to the US, just weeks after sending the first batch to the US military base in Cuba. Donald Trump had pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history, and controversially, Guantánamo was considered to be a staging ground for the actions, with options to expand the facilities used for immigration-related detention.
Approximately 300 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, were recently deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), a mega-prison notorious for brutal conditions.
Family members have repeatedly denied gang affiliations, while the administration has refused to provide evidence, invoking “state secrets” privilege.
Questions about the accuracy of these gang allegations have intensified as more information has emerged about some of them, such a 23-year-old gay makeup artist with no apparent gang affiliations who was deported to the Cecot prison without a hearing. His attorney, Lindsay Toczylowski, said officials had previously misinterpreted his tattoos as gang symbols, and that his client was scheduled to appear at an immigration court appearance in the US before he was suddenly sent to El Salvador.
The deportations come amid legal challenges to Trump’s use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, which a federal appeals court has blocked. A federal judge has ordered “individualized hearings“ for those targeted for removal.
Intelligence agencies reportedly contradict Trump’s claims linking the Tren de Aragua gang to the Venezuelan government, undermining a key justification for the deportations, according to the New York Times.
Still, the Trump administration has vowed to continue the deportation strategy through other means, and is currently petitioning the supreme court to lift the block on its use of the wartime deportation powers.
