What's the Real Quid Pro Quo with Bukele?
Hint: It's not about fighting "terrorism," or stopping illegal immigration.
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Dear Reader,
I suspect that as a CAFE reader, you have been following the twists and turns of the legal wrangling between the courts and the Trump administration with regard to the mistaken removal and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father and El Salvadoran national whom the government acknowledges was sent to El Salvador as a result of an “administrative error.” Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding a lower court’s order that the administration “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), where he is currently being held (as far as we are aware), the government has continued its kabuki dance of making filings that are pretty much nonresponsive to the court’s demand for more information about what the government is actually trying to do to comply with the court’s order. Lost in all this, though, is a more fundamental question: What kind of “arrangement” could the United States possibly have with a corrupt, third-world dictator who has been credibly accused of engaging in rampant human rights violations in his own country? Well, there are some clues that might explain why the Trump administration doesn’t want anyone to know.
So let’s start with this agreement. In its most recent filing, the Trump administration suggests that it can’t disclose the details of the agreement with El Salvador because it is classified. This…is specious. Under the Constitution, the foreign affairs authority when it comes to treaties with foreign states – which have the force of law in the U.S. – is shared between the President and Congress. The President can negotiate such treaties, but the Senate must ratify them before they take effect. Practically, though, the executive branch might need to come to less formal “executive agreements” with other countries for a number of reasons. So Congress passed the Case Zablocki Act (hat tip to Brian Finucane of Just Security for the reference), which applies to
A non-binding instrument that is or will be under negotiation, is signed or otherwise becomes operative, or is implemented with one or more foreign governments…and could reasonably be expected to have a significant impact on the foreign policy of the United States.
At least once every month, the Secretary of State is required to present to the majority and minority leaders of both houses a list of such agreements, their text, and the legal authority under which they were negotiated. Clearly, the purpose of this Act is to 1) keep Congress in the loop to ensure that the President isn’t getting the U.S. tied up in shady deals (remember Iran-Contra?) and 2) to ensure accountability and transparency. In fact, the Act requires that within 120 days of the agreement becoming operative, the text of the agreement must be published on the Department of State’s website. And to the extent that Trump’s deal with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, is “classified,” the Act also allows for publication with a “classified annex” (meaning, classification does not preclude transparency).
So, why all the secrecy? I mean, President Bukele released a propaganda video of the detainees arriving in his country, which was followed by a propaganda video by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem inside the prison itself. Clearly, they want people to know what is happening. But…the devil, as always, is in the details, so it’s something about the terms that they want to keep hidden. And, we know that Trump isn’t going to do anything without getting something in return. Neither is Bukele, who’s known as the Trump of El Salvador. So what is the quid pro quo here?
There are two possibilities. The first is political. El Salvador has suffered from gang violence, led by Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, following decades of civil war from 1979 to 1992. According to an indictment brought by the Eastern District of New York against thirteen MS-13 gang members in 2022, various El Salvadoran administrations since the war ended entered into a “truce” with MS-13, in which the gang agreed to reduce homicides in the city “in exchange for transfers to less secure prisons, improved prison conditions, conjugal visits, cash payments, and other benefits and privileges.” The “truce” came to a halt, however, in 2015 after the U.S. government, which wanted to curb MS-13’s activity in the United States and bring them to justice here, increased pressure on El Salvador to return to restrictive prison conditions for gang members and extradite some of them to the U.S. In retaliation for the “truce” being lifted, MS-13 increased its violence both in El Salvador and in the U.S. In fact, the first Trump Justice Department created a task force, called Task Force Vulcan, to crack down on MS-13 in the U.S. – which is what led to the federal indictment noted earlier.
Enter Bukele. Bukele was elected in 2019, winning on a platform that promised to (once again) “crack down” on gang violence. But his party, Nuevas Ideas, began secretly working to gain the support of a critical group: Yep, MS-13. Bukele and his party negotiated with the gang to bring back the “truce,” which would include (according to the federal indictment) “financial benefits, control of territory, the ability to run the gang from prison, and the early release of gang members.” MS-13 also wanted assurance that they wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., where they would face more punitive measures. (Having studied the drug cartels in Colombia, this was reminiscent of Pablo Escobar’s mantra, “Mejor una tumba en Colombia, que una carcel in los Estados Unidos” – which means, “Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.”) The same day Bukele’s party received a legislative majority in 2021, it removed the Attorney General and five members of the Supreme Court who had been working with the U.S. to take real action against MS-13. Buekele also released a major MS-13 leader whom the U.S. was seeking for extradition from prison.
In exchange, MS-13 “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefitted the government, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate.” Indeed, Bukele’s popularity is the result of his so-called “Territorial Control Plan,” which involved building his supermax prison and his plan of mass incarceration – a plan which he credits for the drop in violence since he took office. Of course, the citizens of El Salvador aren’t privy to the secret negotiations Bukele made with MS-13 – details that were going to be made public when the U.S. government’s case against the MS-13 defendants went to trial. Which may explain why the Trump administration quietly dropped these charges last week and put the charged MS-13 members on the third plane bound for El Slavador (and which included Abrego Garcia). Among the defendants was one of the highest-ranking leaders of MS-13, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, who was arrested last June and added to the earlier indictment (and who almost certainly will not face real punishment in El Salvador). A former FBI agent who spent years working on this and other gang cases called it “a historical loss,” especially in terms of getting critical intelligence about MS-13’s operations and members in the United States.
In short, both Trump and Bukele appear to be complicit in a plan to allow MS-13 to operate in El Salvador on its own terms, in exchange for making it look like both are “cracking down” on the gang in their respective countries. Of course, the fact that MS-13 will continue to operate in cahoots with the El Salvadoran government means that citizens of that country who are victims of the gang will continue fleeing to the United States, undercutting the Trump administration’s claim that it is trying to end the “invasion” of asylum seekers. Then again, Trump needs a steady influx of people to continue trying to cross the border in order to keep claiming the “national emergency” he is using to expand his authority. So it’s a win-win propaganda operation.
Are these details explicitly mentioned in the agreement Bukele and Trump have come up with? (You’d think they wouldn’t be, but then again we’re talking about an administration that invited a journalist into a Signal chat discussing classified war plans.) Maybe not, but to the extent they mention the release of specific MS-13 members who have already been indicted by the Justice Department, the Trump administration may be hoping to avoid closer scrutiny of why it is suddenly dropping the charges.
As I mentioned, that could be just one reason the Trump administration doesn’t want to reveal the details. The other reason is that the deal as written simply undercuts the Trump administration’s legal claim that it can’t do anything to secure Abrego Garcia’s return. The AP has quoted internal memos from El Salvador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which states that the country will “house these individuals for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on their long term disposition.” Meaning that the U.S., not El Salvador, is in control of what happens to the people sent there – undercutting recent claims made in court by the Justice Department that they are being held under the “domestic, sovereign authority” of El Salvador.
Either way, it’s clear that Trump doesn’t want the courts, Congress, or the American people to know exactly what kind of “deal” he has negotiated on our country’s behalf with a vicious dictator. One thing I am confident of, though, is that the truth will come out, especially in an administration as sloppy and incompetent as this one – and my guess is that it will be shadier than we ever imagined.
Stay Informed,
Asha
Very interesting. I haven’t read this analysis anywhere else.
On another note… Thank you for all the times you stitch things together in this way. It is the product of intelligent study and insight that I appreciate greatly, but mostly, I appreciate the honest (years of) intellectual effort behind it. Your best essays stand apart from the loudly assertive but often wrong-to-the-point-of-obvious-inconsistency that passes for expertise in the media.
I should stop there, but I don’t want to add a 3rd reply to this thread and get myself arrested for stalking… so…
A few months back, we exchanged notes about the threat that seemed to fit the pattern of facts surrounding the trump exploits in crypto. You reacted in much the same way to my theory as I do to yours in general — not my wheelhouse, wish I had the expertise to evaluate and verify, but scary to the extent that I trust your judgement. Since then, we’ve watched several developments (the proposal for a US crypto stockpile, the policy endangering the bond market and the dollar as the world reserve currency, the elevation of the PayPal mafia to the highest levels of political power) that make the theory more likely.
Well, I like a good “I told you so!” as much as the next guy, but that’s not my point. My point is that I don’t have even the smattering of expertise in law that you do in computing, yet, as time goes by, I see real events fill in around your insights in a very consistent way. And I’ve learned to trust your opinion. Very refreshing and even sanity-affirming in a world of pontificators who disappear post-pontification, without a trace, in a cloud of inconsistency.