Twenty-three members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), including two leaders accused of acts of terrorism in the United States, were sent by the Donald Trump administration to El Salvador in the early hours of March 16, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. An extensive security detail received the Salvadoran gang members, along with 238 alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua. All were transported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), as part of a bilateral agreement between the two countries, as confirmed by President Bukele and Rubio on social media. In order to send one of them, veteran gang member César Antonio López Larios, alias “Greñas de Stoners”, one of the top leaders of the Salvadoran criminal organization, the Eastern District of New York, in charge of prosecuting 27 MS-13 leaders, waived Larios’ indictment in that country, in favor of his trial in El Salvador, for “geopolitical and national security concerns of the United States.”
López Larios was held in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. He had been sent there for “specific and credible threats from both another faction of MS-13, their own transnational criminal organization, and other rival criminal organizations, including the Mexican Mafia and Sureños,” according to a document dated November 22, 2024. In other words, the U.S. prison system had separated him even from his own gangmates, who were held in other areas of the prison.
In a video released by Bukele and in photographs of the operation, which involved police and military personnel, there are images showing that Greñas is among the MS-13 leaders who have been deported. There is still no official information about the second gang leader mentioned by Rubio. Larios appears subdued, on his knees, entering CECOT, the only prison publicized by Bukele's government, which has allowed the controlled entry of dozens of journalists and YouTubers, who usually promote this access as “exclusive” in their media outlets and channels. Bukele's government refuses to provide any information about the other 22 prisons where there have been more than 350 deaths of inmates, many of them unrelated to gangs, and systematic torture by prison guards.
“On this occasion, the U.S. has also sent us 23 MS-13 members wanted by Salvadoran justice, including two ringleaders. One of them is a member of the criminal organization’s highest structure,” Bukele wrote on X, adding, “This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors.” In the same video of the operation released by Bukele, a second prisoner dressed in yellow appears next to Greñas: César Eliseo Sorto.
This is the first removal of foreign criminals to El Salvador under the Trump administration, and it happened despite a court order requiring the Trump administration to halt deportations. The deal was announced on Feb. 3, 2025. In addition to paying a fee, the government had said that the return of gang leaders to El Salvador was “a point of honor” in the negotiations, in the words of Milena Mayorga, Salvadoran ambassador to the United States.
The events that ended with the televised deportation of one of the top leaders of MS-13 had been in motion since March 11, according to court documents. The U.S. government requested that the charges against López Larios be dismissed.
“Due to geopolitical and national security reasons of the United States, and the sovereign authority of the Executive Branch in international affairs, the United States is dismissing the indictment against the defendant without prejudice, so that El Salvador can proceed first with its criminal charges against the defendant under Salvadoran law,” wrote prosecutor John Durham.
That letter was kept confidential until this Sunday, due to “significant operational concerns, including the safety of the officers transporting the defendant” and possible “harm to the government’s relationship with a foreign ally.”
The letter is part of the proceedings in the Eastern District Court of New York against the leadership of MS-13, before Judge Joan M. Azrack. In another document dated March 16, U.S. Attorney Durham confirmed the deportation of López Larios. “It is the [U.S.] government’s understanding that the operation involves not only the Department of Justice, but also multiple components from the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies,” it says.
López Larios was imprisoned in El Salvador, accused of 12 crimes, including seven for conspiracy to commit aggravated homicide and two for aggravated homicide. But on Oct. 27, 2020, the Specialized Criminal Chamber ordered the “cessation” of his preventive detention, which he was serving in the Zacatecoluca Maximum Security Prison in El Salvador. His trial dragged on and he exceeded the three years of imprisonment that the law allows for those who do not have a final sentence. Bukele had been president for just over a year when Larios was released from Zacatecoluca.
Greñas, born in 1978 in Santa Ana, was considered a veteran in the gang. In El Salvador, he has a criminal record for homicide, aggravated homicide, extortion, resistance, and illicit association. After being deported from Los Angeles in 1999, founded the Stoners Locos clique in Santa Ana, in western El Salvador. In 2002, together with other historical leaders who over time negotiated with various governments, including that of Nayib Bukele, he founded the gang’s Ranfla Nacional, the highest governing body of MS-13 in El Salvador and, over time, in Mexico and the U.S. East Coast. After being released from prison for first-degree murder in 2011, he was re-arrested in January 2013 for extortion in Chalatenango, but was let go later that year and fled to the United States where, according to the DOJ, he committed transnational extortion from North Hollywood, threatening Salvadorans in the United States and El Salvador. Captured and deported to El Salvador by U.S. authorities in 2017, he was held in Zacatecoluca and, according to Operation Tecana, an investigation by the Salvadoran police that same year, he was responsible for coordinating the murder of several police officers.
In the United States, since December 2020, he has been charged with four counts of conspiracy: to provide and conceal material support for terrorists, to commit acts of terrorism transcending national borders, to finance terrorism, and to engage in narcoterrorism.
López Larios was arrested on June 9, 2024, in the city of Arriaga, in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, by the specialized police of the State Attorney General’s Office. He was then transferred to Houston, Texas, where he was handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
His return to El Salvador runs contrary to the federal investigation against him in Long Island, New York, and a slate of historic leaders of MS-13. Since the first indictment against some of these men was filed in 2019, the United States has requested the extradition of the other accused members of the Ranfla. U.S. prosecutors even asserted that part of the pact between the Bukele government and the gangs involved blocking their extradition to the United States.
The Salvadoran Supreme Court, controlled by Bukele since May 2021, denied at least four extradition requests for Salvadoran criminal leaders. One of them, Élmer Canales Rivera, alias Crook, was illegally released by the Salvadoran authorities in November 2021, months before the truce broke down and Bukele decreed his state of exception in March 2022, which is still in force. Crook, like Greñas, was captured months later by the FBI in Mexico and sent to the United States. In its desperation to capture Crook, the Salvadoran government even negotiated with another fugitive gang leader to make a deal with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel to orchestrate his capture and shipment to El Salvador. The gang member deceived the Bukele government and entered U.S. protective custody.
Since the state of exception was declared, no images or videos have emerged of the whereabouts of the MS-13 leaders allegedly imprisoned in El Salvador, despite the fact that the Bukele government has released images of hundreds of captured and tattooed gang members.
The U.S. Department of Justice formally began the prosecution of the Ranfla Nacional of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 in 2020. On Jan. 14, 2021, the New York District Attorney’s Office filed an indictment on terrorism charges against fourteen gang leaders, creators of the Ranfla Nacional who since 2002 had directed acts of violence and homicides from Salvadoran prisons with an international reach. César Antonio López Larios was among those indicted.
According to the indictment, the U.S. Department of Justice considers it proven that the Bukele government has been negotiating in secret since 2019 with the Mara Salvatrucha-13, and that it offered the main gang leaders financial benefits and facilitated communication so that they would maintain territorial control of their structures for the duration of that agreement. The pact included less restrictive prison conditions and even sentence reductions. In exchange, according to federal prosecutors, MS-13 supported the Nuevas Ideas party in the 2021 municipal and legislative elections and kept homicide levels low at least until March 2022, when the pact broke down, according to audio published by El Faro of Carlos Marroquín, one of the negotiators on behalf of President Bukele.
Given the context under the Biden administration, where the Salvadoran and US governments were fighting over the leaders of MS-13, the return of Greñas to El Salvador is an exotic milestone, difficult to interpret. Without a doubt, it can send a message to gang members imprisoned in the United States who try to collaborate with the authorities of that country to denounce the pact of that organization with the Bukele government: They can all be returned to El Salvador.
Tren de Aragua arrives in El Salvador
In addition to the MS-13 members who have been deported, alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua were also transferred to the country. The Press Secretariat of the Presidency of El Salvador said that there were 238 members of the Tren de Aragua. But CBS News reported two groups of Venezuelans: 137 with Tren de Aragua ties, deported under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, and the remaining 101 deported under normal immigration law. According to the Press Secretariat, the members of the Tren de Aragua “will remain in the CECOT for a period of one year (renewable).”
Tren de Aragua emerged around 2010 in the state of Aragua, Venezuela, extorting money to allow the construction of a railway. Its power grew in the void of control in Venezuelan prisons, where they consolidated under leaders whom they call “pranes”. With the intensification of Venezuelan migration in 2020, due to the conditions of misery under the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro, some of its members inserted themselves into the migrant flow and arrived in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, or the United States.
Experts consulted by The Intercept pointed out that the last time the United States used this law was to detain thousands of Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. Experts have criticized the abusive and unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act for immigration purposes or for deportation in times of peace, which could also be used to detain and deport anyone without the need to prove that they belong to a criminal or terrorist group.
The deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador also poses yet another legal controversy for Trump. U.S. media reported that the Trump administration ignored a court order to stop the deportation flights, issued an hour and 15 minutes before the first flight was due to land in San Salvador. True to form, Bukele made light of the decision to ignore the court order with a laughing emoji and the phrase “too late”.
Between emojis and government propaganda videos, neither the U.S. nor the Salvadoran authorities have provided precise information on whether or not those deported are Venezuelans convicted in the United States, whether they are all in fact linked to the Aragua Train, or whether some of them are simply undocumented migrants.
The fact that Bukele has accepted not only Salvadoran gang members but also those from other countries contrasts with his attitude three years ago. In March 2022, when the state of exception began, Bukele challenged the international community: “We have 70,000 gang members still on the streets. Come and get them, take them to your countries, get them out of this ‘dictatorial and authoritarian persecution’. You can help these little angels, don't let us continue to ‘violate their rights’. Salvadoran legislator Christian Guevara echoed: “We'll send them to you with love.”
Now, the country is receiving more gang members. “As promised by @POTUS [the president of the United States], we sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars,” wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X.
*With information from Carlos García, Nelson Rauda, and Óscar Martínez
