ReutersThe Trump Administration expelled 17 other members of alleged gangs in Salvador, said the US State Department, despite the legal battles to withdraw people from Supermax prison in the country of Central America.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the group included Tren Gangs from Aragua and MS-13.
The Salvadoran government officials told the BBC that they included a mixture of Venezuelans and Salvadoran.
Earlier this month, a court interrupted the deportations carried out under the law on extraterrestrial enemies, a law of 1798 previously used only in wartime. However, the American media, citing administrative sources, said that recent deportations had been carried out under the general immigration laws.
In a statement, Rubio said that the group included “murderers and rapists”, but had not provided names or details on alleged crimes or convictions.
In an article on X, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, shared a radically published video showing men in charge of an airplane and their heads are shaved before being placed in the prison cells.
“All individuals are confirmed murderers and high-level delinquents, including six children’s rapists,” he wrote. “This operation is another step in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.”
President Trump republished the message, blamed the administration of his predecessor Joe Biden for allowing the deportees of the United States and thanked Bukele for “giving them such a wonderful place to live”.
El Salvador agreed to take deportees in exchange for $ 6 million (4.6 million pounds sterling).
Family members of some of those who were previously sent to the maximum security prison denied having gang ties.
After Trump invoked the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies to withdraw more than 100 Venezuelans from the United States earlier this month, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union posted a judicial challenge alleging that the administration had illegally denied the regular immigrant procedure.
During a hearing on March 15, James Boasberg, the best Federal Judge of Washington DC, imposed a temporary ban on the use of the law and ordered expulsion flights that were in the air.
But the deportations took place. The next hearing of the case will take place on Thursday.
With report by Will Grant
