The Washington Post reports:

The message from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry outlined an audacious plan: The United States would be sending as many as 500 Venezuelan gang members to the Central American nation, and it planned to do so within 24 hours.

The March 13 communication was part of secretive negotiations with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and served as Rubio’s formal notice that the Trump administration was sending the Venezuelans to be imprisoned there for a year “or until a determination concerning their long-term disposition is made,” documents show. Detainees at the megaprison have no access to lawyers or contact with their families.

A Washington Post investigation shows how officials raced to execute the plan, rounding up some of the men at their homes the same day Rubio’s message went out. And they pressed forward with the removals, even as Venezuela agreed to accept deportation flights, in a high-stakes bid to show power and deter migrants from attempting to cross the border illegally.

The Post examined immigration and court records, and conducted interviews with attorneys, friends and family members, to piece together information about more than 50 of the men believed to be imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center, the megaprison often referred to by its Spanish acronym, CECOT. The review shows that despite the administration’s claims, many of the immigrants sent to El Salvador had entered the United States legally and were actively complying with U.S. immigration rules.

At least two of the men imprisoned in El Salvador had been approved by the State Department to resettle as refugees in the U.S. after extensive vetting by federal law enforcement authorities, documents show. At least four had protections against removal through temporary protected status, often called TPS, granted to those fleeing Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis, according to attorneys for the men or records shared with The Post. Others had been active members of Venezuela’s opposition and had open asylum claims.

On March 15, a day later than Rubio’s message anticipated, the U.S. sent more than 260 migrants, including 23 Salvadorans, to El Salvador. Many had no deportation orders. President Donald Trump invoked the wartime powers of the Alien Enemies Act against the Venezuela-based gang known as Tren de Aragua to remove over 100 of the migrants without giving them a chance to contest their removals.

The first flights were over international waters when a federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration to turn them around. Instead, they flew to Honduras, where they waited on the tarmac for four hours. Bukele would not allow them to land in El Salvador until the international airport there was closed to commercial traffic for the night, around 10 p.m., according to a U.S. official and an airport administrator. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss internal matters.

Rubio has said that the U.S. had to send the Venezuelans to El Salvador that day because their own country would not take back alleged gang members. But records reviewed by The Post show that two deportation flights to Venezuela were also scheduled to leave that weekend carrying dozens of alleged criminals, including at least one man Rubio has publicly accused of gang membership.

Those flights were canceled after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, prompting uncertainty about whether Venezuela could still safely send a plane to the U.S. to pick up deportees, according to two people involved in the discussions. Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation says that property belonging to an “alien enemy” and used for hostile activity is subject to “seizure and forfeiture.”

Though Trump administration officials have called the migrants sent to CECOT in mid-March the “worst-of-the-worst criminals,” in court, the government has admitted that many do not have criminal records. Neither the U.S. nor El Salvador has released their names, leaving families to scour unofficial lists and sleuth through videos and photos released by Bukele’s government to determine their loved ones’ whereabouts.

The Trump administration has admitted that it sent one man, Kilmar Abrego García, to El Salvador in error. A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to return a second man while his asylum claim is adjudicated. The operation was so hurried that officials also flew several women who could not be detained at the all-male prison and had to be returned to the United States. El Salvador also declined to imprison a Nicaraguan the U.S. had sent, fearing conflict with its neighboring countries, court records indicate.

In response to detailed questions from The Post, a senior State Department official acknowledged that the Venezuelan government had planned to accept deportation flights the same weekend as the flights to El Salvador, but dismissed those as “one-offs.”

“The Venezuelan regime began to accept regular repatriation flights of Venezuelan nationals only after the U.S. began the criminal alien deportation flights to El Salvador,” the official said.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the administration would not “detail counterterrorism operations and foreign policy negotiations with foreign countries for the press.” A Justice Department spokesperson said: “Activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy, remove dangerous illegal aliens from our country, and keep Americans safe.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

The Post asked three communications officials in the Salvadoran government to provide the identities, whereabouts and additional information about the deportees transferred to CECOT but received no response.

Rander Peña, Venezuela’s vice minister of foreign affairs, said his government has not received an official list of names of those detained in El Salvador.

The deportations have triggered a standoff between the courts and the Trump administration, which has asserted that its executive power overrides certain due process rights. The administration’s attempts to circumvent court rulings have sparked concerns among some legal scholars of a looming constitutional crisis.

On Thursday, a federal judge blocked the administration from removing migrants in South Texas under the Alien Enemies Act, finding that the president’s invocation of the act had exceeded his authority.

“It’s horrifying,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, a Salvadoran human rights group. “The Venezuelans have not had a trial. They have not been convicted. They’ve been deported to El Salvador and disappeared into one of the most brutal prisons in the hemisphere. They’re outside the reach of the rule of law at this point.” [Continue reading…]