Trump Administration Deports More Detainees to El Salvador

The Trump administration on Sunday sent a fourth plane carrying deportees to El Salvador, claiming it was acting under a different authority than the obscure wartime law that it cited previously, prompting a federal judge to block the transfers.

Administration officials said all 17 men, whom they described as gang members, had been deported under regular U.S. immigration law and had final orders of removal. But the administration described the action in similar military terms as the earlier transfers, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Joe Kasper, the Pentagon’s chief of staff, both calling the deportations ”counterterrorism” operations.

Mr. Rubio said in a statement on Monday the U.S. military had transported 17 “violent criminals,” including “murderers and rapists” with gang affiliations, to El Salvador. Mr. Kasper, the Pentagon’s chief of staff, said the deportations were “a successful counterterrorism mission” carried out by the U.S. military in partnership with El Salvador.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said in a social media post that the two countries had conducted a “joint military operation” and claimed that all the migrants “are confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders.” The post included a video showing men in restraints being led off a U.S. Air Force plane at night.

On Monday, President Trump reposted Mr. Bukele’s announcement on his social media platform, Truth Social, thanking El Salvador “for taking the criminals” and blaming former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allowing them to enter the United States. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, later said on Fox News that Mr. Bukele told her during a meeting last week that he was “absolutely” ready to continue taking in America’s deportees, including what Ms. Noem called “the worst of the worst.”

Seven of the men are Venezuelan citizens, while the other 10 are Salvadoran citizens, according to a senior State Department official, who was not authorized to discuss the details of the deportations and spoke on condition of anonymity. The migrants had briefly been held at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before they were flown to a large prison in El Salvador.