Trump administration trying to dismiss MS-13 leader's charges to deport him [View all]

[muriel_volestrangler]

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.
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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”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/23/trump-administration-ms-13-leaders-criminal-charges-deportation

So Trump is happy to ignore actual crimes by actual MS-13 members in the USA, if it stops embarrassment for his chief jailer.