Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favor for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.
According to justice department records, the MS-13 figure in question, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, has intimate knowledge of that secretive pact, which – before eventually falling apart – involved Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s government ceding money and territory to the gang, who in return promised to reduce violence from its side and provide Bukele’s party with electoral support.
Attempts by the Trump administration to expel Arevalo-Chavez are part of its own deal with Bukele to allow for the US to incarcerate immigrants in a maximum security Salvadoran prison. CNN reported in April that Bukele’s government had specifically asked for nine top MS-13 leaders to be brought back to El Salvador from the US.
Critics of Trump who are defending Arevalo-Chavez’s rights see the move to deport him as a way to prevent him from testifying in a US court, or becoming a federal government cooperator, to limit disclosures about Bukele’s past ties to the gang as much as possible.
Arevalo-Chavez is a member of the “Ranfla Nacional”, which is considered to be a directors’ board of sorts for the MS-13 gang. Federal charges pending against him in New York include racketeering, terrorism and conspiring to commit narco-terrorism.
A filing from the US justice department – dated 1 April but not unsealed until Thursday – said federal prosecutors want to dismiss charges against Arevalo-Chavez for “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations”.
Prosecutors added that “geopolitical and national security concerns of the United States” and said permitting “the prosecution of the defendant to proceed in the first instance in El Salvador” was also a factor.
Arevalo-Chavez is still in the US, with his attorneys requesting more information about the reasons behind the dismissal of charges and the intended deportation.
The judge ruled in April to not relocate him anywhere, preventing his being placed into the custody of the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which would lead to his deportation.
“The ‘geopolitical and national security concerns’ appear to be an effort by the government to support a ‘deal’ with El Salvador to assist Bukele in suppressing the truth about a secret negotiation he had with MS-13 leaders in return for our government using El Salvador prisons,” Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys said in a separate filing also unsealed on Thursday. That filing in particular mentioned the notorious Cecot prison built to house alleged gang members.
The US attorney’s office for New York’s eastern federal district, where Arevalo-Chavez is being prosecuted, declined to comment Friday when asked by the Guardian. Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In mid-March, the US justice department quietly dismissed charges against another top Ranfla Nacional member and expelled him to El Salvador to be detained at Cecot, an acronym whose full name in Spanish means “the terrorism confinement center”. That other Ranfla leader, Cesar Humberto López-Larios, was facing similar charges in New York and also reportedly had insight about the deal Bukele previously struck with the gang.
“This is collusion between two governments, the US and El Salvador, to cover up a gang pact by dropping charges on known gangsters in order to disappear them before they can testify,” said political science professor Michael Ahn Paarlberg at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s a criminal conspiracy between the Trump and Bukele administrations.
“The irony is both of them claim to be tough on crime.”
According to a justice department indictment, in 2019, the MS-13 leadership forged a pact with top Bukele administration officials. El Faro, a Salvadoran news organization, first reported on secretive meetings during which Bukele officials would enter prisons in El Salvador to negotiate directly with the Ranfla leaders.
As part of the deal, MS-13 would receive certain money- and land-related concessions while agreeing to reduce the amount of violence they inflicted in El Salvador. Additionally, some top MS-13 leaders were released from prison – and the gang promised to leverage its networks to support Bukele’s political party in the 2021 legislative elections, according to prosecutors.
The pact purportedly collapsed in 2022, leading Bukele to engage in a massive offensive against gangs in the country. Critics say that so-called state of exception crackdown led to a trampling of due process and human rights in the Central American nation – while also allowing Bukele to further consolidate power there.
For years, Bukele has attempted to suppress any evidence of his ties to MS-13 by either attempting to recapture Ranfla leaders or by ignoring US extradition requests.
US federal law enforcement agencies have long pursued MS-13’s criminal networks. In 2020 and in 2022, two separate federal indictments in New York charging 27 leaders of the gang were handed up and unsealed.
In 2021, the US treasury department sanctioned two top Bukele officials for their alleged “corruption”, saying they engaged in “covert negotiations between government officials and the criminal organization” in order to secure the secret pact with MS-13. The treasury department also alleged that Bukele’s administration in 2020 provided financial incentives to MS-13 to reduce gang violence in exchange for “political support”.
Arevalo-Chavez, one of the co-defendants in the 2022 indictment, had “participated in negotiations with the government of El Salvador on behalf of MS-13”, said the justice department, then controlled by Joe Biden’s presidential administration. Arevalo-Chavez left El Salvador and went to Mexico, where he helped run the gang’s operations there.
The Mexican government arrested Arevalo-Chavez in February 2023 and quickly transferred him to the US, where the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) took custody. He is in custody in a federal detention facility while his case proceeds.
Relations between El Salvador and the US have improved since Trump took office. In 2021, tensions between Biden officials and the Bukele government flared when, despite an international arrest warrant and extradition request, Salvadoran officials quietly released Ranfla Nacional leader Elmer Canales-Rivera from prison. US prosecutors alleged in a 2023 letter that he was personally escorted out of prison by a high-level Bukele official, given a firearm and driven to the Guatemalan border for his escape.
The Bukele administration then attempted to recapture Canales-Rivera. According to reporting from El Faro, Bukele’s government discussed a plan to pay a Mexican cartel to find Canales-Rivera and return him to El Salvador. The Mexican government found him first, arrested him, and expelled him to the US in November 2023.
Eight Ranfla Nacional leaders remained in US custody after López-Larios one was expelled in March. Two of them pleaded guilty earlier this year.
