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Trump thanks El Salvador for taking alleged gang members

March 17, 2025 | | Print Article

President Donald Trump expressed gratitude to El Salvador after a video posted showed alleged gang members who were deported from the U.S.

The president wrote a message of thanks to President Nayib Bukele on Truth Social, sharing a video of alleged deported criminals arriving in El Salvador after the Trump administration deported nearly 300 illegal aliens, many of them alleged to be members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

“Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable),” Bukele’s post on social media read. “The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us.”

“A senior Trump administration official confirmed to Fox News that a total of 261 illegal aliens were deported to El Salvador yesterday – 137 were via the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, 101 were Venezuelans removed via Title 8, 21 were Salvadoran MS-13 gang members and two were MS-13 ringleaders and “special cases” for El Salvador, according to the official,” Fox News reported.

“The rap sheets for those removed included kidnapping, sexual abuse of a child, aggravated assault, prostitution, robbery, and aggravated assault of a police officer,” the outlet added.

Trump referred to the migrants as “monsters” in his Truth Social post which included the intense three-minute video from the El Salvador leader.

“These are the monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump wrote. “How dare they!”

“Thank you to El Salvador and, in particular, President Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation, which was allowed to happen to the United States because of incompetent Democrat leadership,” the president added. “We will not forget!”

“President @nayibbukele is not only the strongest security leader in our region, he’s also a great friend of the U.S.,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post. “Thank you!”

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport the migrants despite a judge’s order to halt the deportation. The administration clarified that it did not defy U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s order, but that it came too late to prevent the departure of the criminals.

“We did not defy a court order. The order came too late, and illegals were already in international airspace,” an administration official told Axios.

The judge had ruled in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU which essentially looked to keep the violent criminals in the United States.

The El Salvadoran president seemed to poke fun at the judge’s order coming “too late,” getting a laughing emoji reaction from Elon Musk.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the order “had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist [Tren de Aragua] aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”

“The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict,” Leavitt said. “A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”

Frieda Powers
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