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Posted
57 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

Did they lock up those construction workers after they were done putting up the sign?

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Posted
On 7/4/2025 at 8:22 AM, freyguy said:

Quit posting and fucking do something about it

We need to quit posting and fucking do something about it.

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Posted
3 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Wonder how much taxpayer money that sign cost?

 

Cost?  Probably equivalent to feeding a couple of thousand poverty stricken children's public school lunches, but the price was worth it.

 

 

Posted
On 7/5/2025 at 3:23 PM, StassneyHorn said:

Just want to add, in the Humans vs Alligators death series, I believe humans are an undisputed 416473726 wins- 100 losses

Yeah but the Gata plays the long game.  Probably safer to wade naked through the swamp than to drive on Tamiami Trail/ Krome Ave

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Posted
Quote

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is ending the temporary status for nearly 80,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans that has allowed them to live and work in the U.S. for a quarter of a century after a devastating hurricane hit Central America, according to federal government notices — a move that comes as the White House pushes to make more immigrants in the U.S. eligible for deportation.

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The Department of Homeland Security said Monday in the Federal Register — in a notice set to become official on Tuesday — that Secretary Kristi Noem had reviewed the country conditions in Honduras and Nicaragua. She concluded the situations there had improved enough since the initial decision in 1999 that people currently protected by those temporary designations could return home.

The department estimated that roughly 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in the U.S. are covered by the status that will now expire in roughly two months. However, the TPS Alliance, which advocates for immigrants covered by these temporary protections, estimated that about 40,000 Hondurans would be affected because many had obtained legal residency through various immigration channels.

 

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-border-trump-honduras-nicaragua-0b45ae86356631f2afee2dd9bbed7a3e

Posted

So….there are some non-updated stories about attacks on CBP facilities in the past few days in McAllen and Alvarado. Like, armed assaults on them. There are the initial stories, then….nothing. No names, no examination of the circumstances, nada. WTF?

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Posted
12 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

Only a matter of time before the cocksuckers invade Austin.

I’ve been surprised I haven’t seen anything while I’m out and about during the day since I drive a lot for work 

Posted

Justice Dept. Leader Suggested Violating Court Orders, Whistle-Blower Says

Emil Bove III, a Trump judicial nominee, voiced his intent to disobey court orders as others stonewalled and misled judges, according to a complaint.

 

Futurama Im Shocked GIF

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/us/politics/justice-department-emil-bove-trump-deportations-reuveni.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VU8.SyfF.YvHXJ729rf5s&smid=url-share (free link)

 

Some key excerpts:

Top officials at the Justice Department and the White House sought to defy federal court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account describes three instances in which senior Justice Department officials engaged in wrongdoing by ignoring court orders, presenting legal arguments with no basis in law, misrepresenting facts to the courts and, in one instance, directing him to misstate facts in violation of his “legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court.”

Mr. Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what,” according to Mr. Reuveni’s account. Mr. Bove then broached “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” according to the account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

Mr. Reuveni and others were “quickly ushered out of the room,” the account says. It continues, “Notwithstanding Bove’s directive, Mr. Reuveni left the meeting understanding that D.O.J. would tell D.H.S. to follow all court orders.”

As far as Mr. Reuveni knew, “no one in D.O.J. leadership — in any administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, his account states. “Mr. Reuveni was in disbelief.”

Quote

A senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation campaign, according to a whistle-blower complaint by a department lawyer who has since been fired.

The account by the dismissed lawyer, Erez Reuveni, paints a disturbing portrait of his final three weeks on the front lines of the Trump administration’s legal efforts to ship immigrants overseas, often with little notice or recourse. In Mr. Reuveni’s telling, Mr. Bove discussed disregarding court orders, adding an expletive for emphasis, and other top law enforcement officials showed themselves ready to stonewall judges or lie to them to get their way.

Mr. Reuveni’s account, which was obtained by The New York Times, was filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department inspector general on Tuesday, just one day before Mr. Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a nomination to a federal appeals court.

Mr. Reuveni was a career lawyer at the department for nearly 15 years until April, when he expressed concern in federal court that the administration had mistakenly deported a migrant to a megaprison in El Salvador. Mr. Reuveni was put on administrative leave a day later and ultimately fired.

In a statement, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, praised Mr. Bove as “an incredibly talented legal mind and a staunch defender of the U.S. Constitution who will make an excellent circuit court judge.”

Mr. Bove’s boss, Todd Blanche, called Mr. Reuveni’s description of events “falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations.” Mr. Blanche denounced this article as “a false hit piece a day before a confirmation hearing,” criticizing The Times for publishing it.

“The claims about Department of Justice leadership are utterly false,” he said in a statement.

The filing, however, suggests a copious trail of emails, texts and phone records that would support Mr. Reuveni’s version of events. It notes that he was recently promoted, and had diligently defended controversial immigration policies of the first Trump administration.

Until now, Mr. Reuveni had stayed silent about the circumstances of his departure. A 27-page account, filed by his lawyers at the Government Accountability Project, Dana L. Gold and Andrea Meza, offers a host of new details and allegations about the inner workings of the Justice Department under Mr. Trump.

It adds that Mr. Reuveni “will continue to tell the truth in defense of the rule of law.”

In March and early April, the filing states, Mr. Reuveni “became aware of the plans of D.O.J. leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans.”

Top officials at the Justice Department and the White House sought to defy federal court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation,” his account states.

“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer,” the account says. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”

A pivotal meeting occurred on March 14, when Mr. Bove, a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, spoke bluntly about the administration’s plans. He informed his subordinates that Mr. Trump would soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly fly a group of immigrants out of the country that weekend. Two other officials in that office, James McHenry and Paul Perkins, were in attendance, as well as Mr. Reuveni’s supervisors, Drew Ensign and August Flentje, according to the whistle-blower document.

Mr. Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what,” according to Mr. Reuveni’s account. Mr. Bove then broached “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” according to the account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

Mr. Reuveni and others were “quickly ushered out of the room,” the account says. It continues, “Notwithstanding Bove’s directive, Mr. Reuveni left the meeting understanding that D.O.J. would tell D.H.S. to follow all court orders.”

As far as Mr. Reuveni knew, “no one in D.O.J. leadership — in any administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, his account states. “Mr. Reuveni was in disbelief.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account does not list Mr. Blanche as one of the people present at the meeting, but the deputy attorney general said in a written statement that he was there, and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account highlights the tensions that have been roiling the Justice Department for months, where many current and former career lawyers have come to fear that the department’s political leaders, chosen by Mr. Trump, are systematically trying to undermine the integrity of their work.

Those appointees, including Mr. Bove, maintain that their goal is to end “weaponization” of the Justice Department, citing as examples the criminal cases filed against Mr. Trump, Jan. 6 rioters and other conservatives who claim to have been unfairly targeted.

To many who work in the Justice Department, those claims ring as a hollow rationalization for its leadership’s willingness to use the criminal justice system to pursue a vengeful right-wing agenda. Already, hundreds have quit rather than follow the course being set by the Trump administration. Scores of others have been demoted or fired.

Mr. Reuveni’s experience has elicited major concern within the rank and file of the department, as many current and former department lawyers believe he was placed in an impossible position — ordered to ignore or mislead the courts, a potentially career-ending violation of legal ethics.

The revelations will only add to the pressure of Mr. Bove’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said in a statement that Mr. Reuveni’s allegations “not only speak to Mr. Bove’s failure to fulfill his ethical obligations as a lawyer, but demonstrate that his activities are part of a broader pattern by President Trump and his allies to undermine the Justice Department’s commitment to the rule of law.”

He urged Senate Republicans “not to turn a blind eye to the dire consequences of confirming Mr. Bove to a lifetime position as a circuit court judge.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account describes three instances in which senior Justice Department officials engaged in wrongdoing by ignoring court orders, presenting legal arguments with no basis in law, misrepresenting facts to the courts and, in one instance, directing him to misstate facts in violation of his “legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court.”

One of those cases involved the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15 to justify flying more than 100 Venezuelans the administration declared were gang members to CECOT, the El Salvador megaprison.

At a hastily convened hearing that day, a federal district judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, asked Mr. Ensign if any deportations or removals were imminent “in the next 24 or 48 hours,” prompting Mr. Ensign to respond, “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

That answer, according to Mr. Reuveni’s account, was false. “Ensign had been present in the previous day’s meeting when Emil Bove stated clearly that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the A.E.A. would be taking off over the weekend no matter what.”

While Mr. Ensign represented the government in court, Mr. Reuveni listened by phone, sending updates to lawyers at the Departments of State and Homeland Security.

At 6:44 p.m., Mr. Reuveni texted his supervisor, Mr. Flentje, referring to Mr. Bove’s disparaging remarks about the judicial system. Mr. Flentje, his account continued, “acknowledged Bove’s comment with a joke referencing the possibility that either he or Mr. Reuveni could be fired, impliedly for reporting up their chain of command concerns that a court order may have been violated.”

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Reuveni emailed D.H.S. and State Department officials that “no one subject to A.E.A. in our custody can be removed.”

The email continued: “And anyone in the air should be returned, unless they have” a different legal authorization for deportation. Lawyers for those two agencies did not respond to his email.

He followed up shortly after with another message, insisting, “we need to address this asap to avoid contempt,” but again, received no response.

Behind the scenes, government lawyers struggled to make sense of how to proceed given their vague instructions. Over the next day, his account states, “it became clear to Mr. Reuveni” that the Departments of State and Homeland Security “were receiving contrary directions from someone else to take actions in violation of court orders.”

According to an email Mr. Reuveni received from Yaakov Roth, the acting assistant attorney general, “Bove had advised D.H.S. that under the court order it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace” before Judge Boasberg’s written order appeared on the court docket.

On March 17, Judge Boasberg instructed the government to explain when the planes departed. After that order, Mr. Reuveni was told by his superiors “that leadership at D.O.J. were reporting ‘down the chain’ that the government was not going to answer the court’s questions about anything that happened before 7:26 p.m. on March 15, and so not to provide information about when the flights took off.”

As the administration continued to stonewall the judge, Mr. Reuveni found it increasingly difficult to get any answers from his bosses, or the agencies he was representing in court, according to his account.

Those difficulties only increased after the administration sent 17 immigrants, which it described as violent criminals and gang members, first to a U.S. military facility in Guantánamo Bay, and then El Salvador.

Those detainees were flown there by military planes, which alarmed Mr. Reuveni because court orders seemed to clearly bar such removals. Mr. Reuveni’s account notes that he received commendations from his supervisors during the first Trump administration.

By April, however, Mr. Reuveni was increasingly at odds with his bosses, and seemingly frozen out of some of the discussions about how to handle the growing legal problem despite his senior role in the department’s Office of Immigration Litigation.

“The evidence demonstrates,” his account summarizes, “that senior D.O.J. leadership withheld information” from its own lawyers, and provided contrary instructions to other agencies, “which resulted in removals in violation of a court order.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account asserts that a third illegal order came in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the mistakenly deported immigrant in Maryland who was sent to El Salvador on one of the March 15 flights despite a judge’s prior ruling that he should not be sent there.

At a court hearing, Mr. Reuveni made headlines when he agreed with an earlier admission from the administration that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal had been a mistake.

In a phone call afterward, Mr. Ensign, stating that his questions “were prompted by the White House,” asked Mr. Reuveni why he had not argued in court that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a terrorist, according to the account.

Mr. Reuveni replied that no evidence had been found to support such a claim, nor did any of the department’s prior court briefs make that assertion. He added that declaring someone a terrorist did not suddenly nullify whether someone was entitled to due process.

The next day, Mr. Reuveni was told he should sign an appeal brief making the terrorism claim against Mr. Abrego Garcia.

Mr. Reuveni’s lawyers say he resisted, arguing that the law does not allow advocates to make new factual claims, which he saw as “contrary to law, frivolous and untrue.”

That led to a final standoff with his supervisor, Mr. Flentje, who told him “he should sign the brief and that he had signed up for the responsibility to do so,” the account states.

Mr. Reuveni responded, “I didn’t sign up to lie.”

He was placed on administrative leave hours later, and fired the next week.

 

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Posted

How El Salvador Is Reaping Rewards From Trump’s Deportation Agenda
In exchange for jailing more than 200 deportees, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has become a favorite of the Trump administration.

For the U.S. government, sending deportees accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador fits with President Trump’s promise to aggressively deport undocumented migrants and to crack down on crime.

For El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, the rewards appear to have included, among other things, a White House visit and stamp of approval, despite widespread concerns over Mr. Bukele’s crackdown on civil liberties.

While the exact terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaders around the world may be watching, experts and immigration lawyers say, especially as the Trump administration searches for countries willing to take expelled migrants of other nationalities.

“Other leaders and countries are trying to emulate the Bukele arrangement,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, a director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that has represented immigrants in lawsuits against the Trump administration. Countries are increasingly “raising their hand to volunteer their incarceration facilities and to facilitate the deportation of people,” he added.

A White House spokeswoman has said the administration is “grateful for President Bukele’s partnership” and for the use of his maximum-security prison, adding, “There is no better place for these sick, illegal criminals.”

MS-13 Gang Leaders Returned
An investigation by The New York Times found the U.S. government not only paid Mr. Bukele’s government around $5 million to incarcerate more than 200 Venezuelan deportees, but added a bonus at his request: the return to El Salvador of several top MS-13 leaders in American custody, some thought to have knowledge of Mr. Bukele’s ties to the gang. [Link to that investigative piece. Full article in Spoiler. HOLY SHIT!]

American authorities have found substantial evidence of secret negotiations between Mr. Bukele’s government and MS-13 leaders, and some experts say Mr. Bukele may want to bury that evidence. He has denied having any pact with the gang; his administration did not respond to a request for comment.

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A Boost for Tourism
In April, the State Department upgraded El Salvador’s travel advisory to its highest rating, citing a “drop in violent crimes and murders.”

While crime has improved, El Salvador jumped to the United States’ safest level, ahead of countries like France or Spain, whose rates of violent crime are the same or lower.

The improved rating reflects a dramatic turnaround for a country that once had a soaring homicide rate and “significant human rights issues,” according to the State Department in 2023.

Since Mr. Bukele ordered mass arrests in 2022, El Salvador has become one of the safest countries in the region, earning him broad support from Salvadorans in a landslide re-election last year.

But the timing of the U.S. upgrade raised questions among critics, as it came soon after El Salvador received deportees, and after Mr. Bukele met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Canada and Britain are among the countries that still warn travelers to exercise increased caution when visiting El Salvador.

Ahilan Arulanantham, of the U.C.L.A. Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said there was “no question” that Mr. Bukele would want the upgrade. Any government, he said, would “prefer a rating saying it’s safe to travel to.”

Mr. Bukele, who hopes tourism will boost the economy, trumpeted the news and promoted a new surfing destination.

“Just got the U.S. State Department’s travel gold star: Level 1: safest it gets,” he said.

Temporary Protected Status
The Trump administration recently ended deportation protections for immigrants from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Honduras and Nicaragua.

But Salvadoran immigrants still have Temporary Protected Status, which shields some 200,000 people from deportation and allows them to legally work in the United States. The privileges last until early September.

Experts say that status earns Mr. Bukele political points at home, where remittances from U.S.-based relatives are vital to the economy.

Muted Criticism
In recent months, Mr. Bukele’s government has cracked down further on civil liberties, targeting civil society groups, arresting critics and pushing some prominent journalists to flee.

And while the European Union condemned a new law giving his government broad powers to silence dissidents, the U.S. government stayed quiet.

Instead, the State Department certified in April that El Salvador was protecting press freedom and strengthening the rule of law.

Attention and Access
After the deportees arrived in El Salvador, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Bukele in the Oval Office, flattering him as “President B.”

Mr. Bukele’s cooperation — and his highly stylized images of shackled deportees entering a prison built for terrorists — also generated buzz, which the Salvadoran president has exploited.

Recently, he sparred online with a fashion designer whose Paris show featured models in outfits resembling those worn by the deportees.

Mr. Bukele has also emerged as an example for other governments, generating at least one agreement, between El Salvador and Costa Rica, to replicate his high-security prison there.

International Scrutiny
The agreement to jail deportees from the United States has invited scrutiny of Mr. Bukele, according to Douglas Farah, an El Salvador expert who advised a Justice Department task force targeting MS-13.

Family members have called for the release of many of the Venezuelan deportees, saying their relatives have no criminal records. Democratic lawmakers have demanded answers about the deal. One returned deportee has said he was mistreated in Salvadoran custody.

Mr. Bukele has denied those allegations. “I don’t care if they call me a dictator,” he said recently. “I would rather be called ‘dictator’ than watch them kill Salvadorans in the streets.”

Mr. Farah said the deal has created tension. “Bukele hadn’t thought about what this would look like to the outside world and to his own people,” he said. For the first time, he added, Mr. Bukele’s image as his nation’s savior is facing “counterpressure.”

 

 

 

Investigative piece on Bukele's links to MS-13 in spoiler. Jesus Christ.

Trump Vowed to Dismantle MS-13. His Deal With Bukele Threatens That Effort.
Top gang leaders being sent back to El Salvador were part of a lengthy federal investigation that has amassed evidence of a corrupt pact between the Bukele government and MS-13.

Spoiler

Even among the brutal ranks of the transnational gang called MS-13, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez stands out as a highly effective manager of murder, prosecutors say.

Known as “Vampiro,” he has been accused of overseeing killings in at least three countries: of migrants in Mexico, rivals in El Salvador and his own compatriots in the United States.

His arrest in February 2023 was a major triumph for American investigators, who only months earlier had accused him and 12 other gang leaders of terrorism, bloodshed and corruption in a wide-ranging federal indictment on Long Island.

But this April, the prosecutors who brought those charges suddenly — and quietly — asked a federal judge to drop them. Citing “national security concerns,” they said they needed to return Mr. Arévalo to El Salvador, his homeland.

The surprising reversal came shortly after a deal the Trump administration struck this year with Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, who agreed to accept more than 200 migrants expelled from the United States into a prison he built for terrorists.

The United States paid El Salvador millions of dollars to help President Trump carry out his deportation agenda, adding an important sweetener at Mr. Bukele’s request: the return of key MS-13 leaders in American custody.

Officials from both countries have said the gang leaders are being sent back to face justice.

But the Trump administration has not acknowledged another reason Mr. Bukele would want them back: U.S. prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who they say agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail, a New York Times investigation found.

The deal with El Salvador heralded by Mr. Trump as a crackdown on crime is actually undermining a longstanding U.S. inquiry into the gang, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative. Two major ongoing cases against some of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders could be badly damaged, and other defendants could be less likely to cooperate or testify in court, they said.

The deal has also undercut Mr. Trump’s own repeated pledges to dismantle MS-13, a central plank of his tough-on-crime brand. Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an internal memo calling for the “total elimination” of the gang, which the White House has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

In his first term, Mr. Trump established a group of prosecutors and investigators known as Task Force Vulcan that brought expansive cases against the gang’s leadership. Some who were part of that effort are now alarmed by the deal with Mr. Bukele, and worry that he wants the gang leaders back to prevent them from revealing damaging information about his government.

The Times investigation found that U.S. officials have had strong indications for years of the troubling relationship between the Bukele administration and MS-13 and its leaders — and had begun scrutinizing Mr. Bukele himself. The findings are based on government documents and interviews with more than 30 people who have knowledge of the Vulcan inquiry or the U.S.-El Salvador relationship, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing federal investigation.

  • The first Trump administration received a warning about the secret pact as early as August 2020 from a top Salvadoran official who showed up at the United States Embassy in San Salvador to share information.
  • The following year, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on that same official and another top Bukele aide after determining they had offered MS-13 leaders money, mobile phones and prostitutes in jail in exchange for their help bringing down the homicide rate and securing votes.
  • Federal investigators were examining whether some U.S. aid provided to El Salvador was being illicitly funneled to benefit MS-13.
  • At one point, a gang leader ordered the assassination of an F.B.I. agent working on the case in El Salvador, to stymie the investigation. The agent and his family had to leave the country.
  • Federal investigators had begun looking at Mr. Bukele’s activities, taking steps to request a review of his bank records to examine possible misappropriation of U.S. funds, according to Christopher Musto, a task force member at the time. ProPublica previously reported some aspects of the case, including the focus on Mr. Bukele.

“It was groundbreaking,” Mr. Musto said of the Vulcan investigation, noting that some agents risked their lives to help track down and detain MS-13 leaders. “We went through a lot to do it.”

While he broadly supports Mr. Trump’s deportation of gang members, Mr. Musto said it was striking to see him host Mr. Bukele at the White House to celebrate their deal.

“He was dirty,” Mr. Musto said of the Salvadoran president. “He was corrupt. And now he’s sitting next to the president in the Oval Office and he’s got prime access to the leader of the free world.”

Mr. Bukele has repeatedly denied there was a pact between his government and gang leaders. Salvadoran officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that “any suggestion that President Trump isn’t successfully eradicating terrorist criminal gangs from the United States is just plain stupid.” She said the administration was “grateful for President Bukele’s partnership” and the use of his maximum-security prison, adding: “There is no better place for these sick, illegal criminals.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that the agency was “focused on making America safe again, which includes ending the invasion of violent illegal alien criminals.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York, which brought the two MS-13 leadership cases, declined to comment.

It remains unclear how many MS-13 leaders the Trump administration has sent back to El Salvador so far — or how many more it plans to return.

At least one of them, César López Larios, was put on a plane to El Salvador in March with other migrants sent to the maximum-security prison. Mr. López had been in U.S. custody for less than a year and was awaiting trial on Long Island on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.

Lawyers for Mr. Arévalo, who remains in federal custody after pleading not guilty, have been trying to prevent him from facing a similar fate. In a recent letter to the judge overseeing the case, they argued that the Trump administration had made “a corrupt deal” to send defendants in the case back “to be silenced by the Bukele administration.”

The government’s sudden reversal troubles Richard Loeschner, the former principal of Brentwood Ross High School on Long Island, where nearly a decade ago two of his students were murdered by MS-13 members.

“Those were heinous acts, and I just hope, my God, that the men who were behind them, the masterminds, serve time — wherever it may be,” Mr. Loeschner said. “I would be very unhappy if they dropped all the charges here and flew them back to El Salvador, and they were just set free.”

“That,” he added, “would be devastating.”

‘Dismantle, Decimate and Eradicate’
The spasm of violence committed by MS-13 on Long Island caught Mr. Trump’s attention during his first term. In July 2017, he delivered a speech in Ronkonkoma, calling the gang’s members “animals” and asserting that the policy of his administration was “to dismantle, decimate and eradicate” the group, which was started by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s before morphing into an international syndicate.

The next year, he invited the mother of one of Mr. Loeschner’s slain students to attend his State of the Union address, telling those watching that the girls had been murdered by “members of the savage MS-13 gang.”

In August 2019, his attorney general, William P. Barr, created a special unit targeting MS-13. Joint Task Force Vulcan was asked to hunt down and prosecute not just the gang’s minions on the streets of American cities, but also its top leaders overseas.

The man selected to oversee Vulcan was a scion of a Justice Department stalwart: John J. Durham, the son of John H. Durham, a longtime federal prosecutor (and ally of Mr. Barr) best known for having investigated the investigators who scrutinized connections between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Bespectacled like his father, but without the imposing beard, the younger Mr. Durham quickly developed a reputation for probity and relentlessness. Working from his base in the federal prosecutor’s office on Long Island, he was placed in charge of a team that drew on the resources of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and at least 10 U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country in MS-13 hot spots.

By the following year, the team had received a big tip.

The Pact
Twice in August 2020, an unusual guest with a startling secret visited the United States Embassy in San Salvador.

His name was Osiris Luna Meza, and he was a top Bukele aide who ran the Salvadoran prison system.

Although Mr. Bukele has long denied having corrupt ties with his country’s gangs, Mr. Luna — one of Mr. Bukele’s closest confidants — told U.S. diplomats that just such a pact existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Times.

Confessing his “discomfort at the government’s interactions” with the gang, the Sept. 10, 2020, cable said, Mr. Luna showed officials at the embassy a security camera screenshot of several masked men entering one of the prisons he oversaw.

One of the men, he said, was a senior MS-13 leader wanted by Salvadoran authorities. Mr. Luna acknowledged that he had personally brought him into the facility to meet with some of his jailed colleagues, though he disavowed knowing anything about their conversations.

Embassy officials were uncertain what to do with the information, according to the cable, because they believed that Mr. Luna, who had a reputation for corruption, was probably downplaying his own involvement. The officials were also skeptical because he had made a big request: asylum in the United States — with luxurious accommodations — in exchange for testifying against the Bukele government.

Still, much of what Mr. Luna revealed at the embassy made its way to Mr. Durham and his Vulcan investigators, according to three people familiar with the matter. Then, shortly after his visit, the Salvadoran news outlet El Faro published a lengthy investigation describing the pact between the Bukele administration and MS-13.

Within months, Vulcan issued its first significant indictment against the highest reaches of MS-13’s leadership. In December 2020, prosecutors charged 14 men, including 10 who were part of the gang’s founding cadre, the 12 Apostles of the Devil. The indictment was unsealed on Jan. 14, 2021, less than a week before Mr. Trump’s successor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was inaugurated.

The charging document revealed, among other acts of violence, that MS-13 had sought the murder of an F.B.I. agent. The agent had been assigned to El Salvador as part of an anti-gang task force helping Vulcan gather intelligence when the hit was put out on him, according to three people with knowledge of the case. He and his family had to be rushed out of the country.

The indictment also had a section titled “Political Influence in El Salvador,” which laid out how MS-13 leaders had helped secure votes for the party that governed El Salvador before Mr. Bukele took over, in exchange for cash and other perks.

The indictment said nothing about Mr. Bukele, who had assumed the presidency in June 2019; Mr. Luna; or the illicit prison visits. There was only a tantalizing reference to how MS-13 had “continued to negotiate with political parties in El Salvador and to use its control of the level of violence to influence actions of the government.”

‘Pick Our Battles’
As Vulcan’s work proceeded, the Biden administration went public with what it knew about the relationship between the Bukele government and MS-13.

In December 2021, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mr. Luna and another top Salvadoran official, Carlos Marroquín Chica, after finding that the men had not merely facilitated prison meetings with MS-13 members after Mr. Bukele took office in 2019, but had also taken part in them. Those meetings, the Treasury report said, were part of the Bukele government’s “efforts to negotiate a secret truce with gang leadership.”

During the negotiations, MS-13 leaders agreed to give their political support to Mr. Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, which ultimately won a two-thirds supermajority in the 2021 legislative elections. Fulfilling its side of the bargain, U.S. officials said, the Bukele government provided the gangsters with money and, for those who were in custody, mobile phones and prostitutes.

Mr. Bukele scoffed at the allegations. “How can they put out such an obvious lie without anybody questioning it?” he wrote in a social media post.

Inside the Biden administration, there was broader worry about the Salvadoran president. Four former officials who focused on Latin American affairs said that U.S. officials had been concerned about the allegations of Mr. Bukele’s ties to Salvadoran gangs going back to his stint as the mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018.

But there was debate about how much to call him out amid a growing migrant crisis, particularly as the president made moves that raised alarm over due process and human rights in El Salvador. As one former official put it, the Biden administration wanted to “pick our battles” with Mr. Bukele.

In 2022, an outburst of violence signaled the breakdown of any pact between Mr. Bukele’s government and top MS-13 leaders. Mr. Bukele imposed a state of emergency, leading police and security forces to carry out mass arrests of tens of thousands of people accused of being gang members or collaborators, many of whom were innocent, human rights groups said. Despite this, his approval ratings soared as crime rates plummeted.

The Bukele government had been dismantling the Salvadoran investigative units that had scrutinized the government’s pact with the gangs and assisted U.S. investigators, and also threatened El Faro reporters for their work uncovering its dealings with the gangs, the journalists have said. Prosecutors and journalists have fled the country for their own safety.

Vulcan 2.0
In early 2023, Mr. Durham led his colleagues at Vulcan into a new phase of their efforts to take down MS-13.

That February, the task force announced the arrest of three gang leaders, including Mr. Arévalo, the man known as Vampiro, who was captured in Mexico, then sent to the United States. The arrests were based on a sprawling second indictment, charging Mr. Arévalo and 12 other high-ranking MS-13 members with an array of narco-terrorism crimes.

“Only by combating MS-13’s command and control structure, and bringing the transnational criminal organization’s highest-ranking leaders to justice in the United States, will we be able to break the persistent cycles of violence that have plagued our communities,” Mr. Durham said in the announcement.

Some of the most explosive revelations concerned Mr. Luna and Mr. Marroquín, identified in the 42-page document only by their government positions.

Mr. Durham’s prosecutors disclosed that the two men had met numerous times inside Salvadoran prisons with top MS-13 leaders, including Elmer Canales Rivera, also known as “Crook.”

The indictment also asserted that the gangsters had asked for assurances from the Bukele government that they would not be extradited to face prosecution in the United States.

Indeed, when the United States originally asked El Salvador to extradite Mr. Canales, “high-level Salvadoran officials” set the gang leader up in a luxury apartment, gave him a firearm and then, prosecutors said, made arrangements to get him out of the country. He remained a fugitive until he was caught by Mexican authorities and placed in American custody in November 2023.

As the Vulcan team pursued its second case, investigators found evidence that it was not just a “few bad apples” in the Bukele administration working with MS-13. There were ties to the gang at “the highest level of government,” one former official with knowledge of the inquiry said.

Mr. Marroquín, a close aide to Mr. Bukele, was suspected of funneling to MS-13 resources from the U.S. Agency for International Development that were coordinated on the ground by a Salvadoran aid program he ran called Tejido Social, according to three people familiar with the case. The aid, which financed community centers outfitted with libraries, computers and other amenities, was believed to have been directed to MS-13 neighborhoods as incentives for gang leaders to cooperate.

The Salvadoran government also appeared to be directly siphoning off U.S. government aid to the gangs. One senior Salvadoran official laid out the scheme in a presentation to Vulcan investigators in a meeting in Washington in spring 2021, according to Mr. Musto, an early member of the task force. While the bulk of U.S. funds went to real projects, “some of that money was going to pay the gang members, too,” he said.

It was around this time that the Vulcan team asked the Treasury Department to review the bank accounts of top Salvadoran officials, including Mr. Bukele’s, as part of the effort to trace the U.S. funds, according to Mr. Musto.

U.S. prosecutors occasionally investigate foreign heads of state, but it is rare to pursue a case against a sitting leader, which can carry significant diplomatic consequences. Mr. Musto, who left the task force in late 2021, said he did not know what came of the request. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

As soon as Treasury officials imposed sanctions on Mr. Marroquín in late 2021, U.S.A.I.D. ended its relationship with Tejido Social, according to five former U.S. officials.

The Unraveling
The unraveling of some of Vulcan’s work began weeks into Mr. Trump’s second term. By early February, the United States had struck its deal with El Salvador, and Mr. Bukele wanted his gang leaders back.

The day after the agreement was announced, the Salvadoran ambassador to Washington, Milena Mayorga, said in an interview that Mr. Bukele requested that MS-13 leaders be among those deported to El Salvador, “as a matter of honor.”

For some on Mr. Durham’s team who had been building cases for years, the Trump administration’s pivot was deeply frustrating.

Nevertheless, on March 11, Mr. Durham sent a letter to Judge Joan M. Azrack, who was overseeing both of the MS-13 leadership indictments, saying the United States was seeking to dismiss all charges against Mr. López, a defendant in the first case.

The letter, filed under seal, asserted that the Vulcan team believed the evidence in the case was “strong.” But the new administration had “important foreign policy considerations” and “national security concerns” that required dropping the case and returning Mr. López to El Salvador, Mr. Durham wrote.

That same day, before defense lawyers had much time to react, Judge Azrack granted the request. Mr. López was placed on a plane four days later and flown into the custody of Salvadoran jailers.

On April 1, prosecutors went back to Judge Azrack, asking again under seal to dismiss the charges against Mr. Arévalo.

This time, defense lawyers put up a fight.

Louis M. Freeman and Thomas H. Nooter, lawyers for Mr. Arévalo, said in a letter to the judge this month that the U.S. government knew it was likely that their client would be “tortured or ‘disappeared’” if he returned to El Salvador, because Mr. Bukele wanted to silence him. They asked the judge to unseal the government’s request to dismiss the charges, which she granted.

In response, Mr. Durham did not address the substance of those accusations, but reiterated that the charges against Mr. Arévalo “must yield” to the administration’s “geopolitical” imperatives.

One defense lawyer familiar with some of the MS-13 prosecutions described the developments as “kind of mind-boggling.”

The Justice Department, he said, was having its cases “literally pulled out from under them.”

 

  • Rage+1 2
Posted
4 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

Justice Dept. Leader Suggested Violating Court Orders, Whistle-Blower Says

Emil Bove III, a Trump judicial nominee, voiced his intent to disobey court orders as others stonewalled and misled judges, according to a complaint.

 

Futurama Im Shocked GIF

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/us/politics/justice-department-emil-bove-trump-deportations-reuveni.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VU8.SyfF.YvHXJ729rf5s&smid=url-share (free link)

 

Some key excerpts:

Top officials at the Justice Department and the White House sought to defy federal court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation.”

Mr. Reuveni’s account describes three instances in which senior Justice Department officials engaged in wrongdoing by ignoring court orders, presenting legal arguments with no basis in law, misrepresenting facts to the courts and, in one instance, directing him to misstate facts in violation of his “legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court.”

Mr. Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what,” according to Mr. Reuveni’s account. Mr. Bove then broached “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” according to the account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

Mr. Reuveni and others were “quickly ushered out of the room,” the account says. It continues, “Notwithstanding Bove’s directive, Mr. Reuveni left the meeting understanding that D.O.J. would tell D.H.S. to follow all court orders.”

As far as Mr. Reuveni knew, “no one in D.O.J. leadership — in any administration — had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, his account states. “Mr. Reuveni was in disbelief.”

 

Good thing we have a healthy system in place that will remove his credentials for willfully violating court orders.  

  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
On 7/9/2025 at 8:07 AM, VABuckeye said:

It's been announced that ICE is coming to our little area of NOVA.  There's a high hispanic population in the area so here we go.

I hadn’t heard the term “wet back” for probably 15 years until my aunts husband said it last year while I was there visiting Manassas family. Needless to say I explained the error of his ways to him and it was an awkward trip. 



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