Secret Bukele Deal Lies Behind Trump’s El Salvador Deportations

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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele during the inauguration of the Key Institute, a private institution of higher education specializing in engineering and science in San Salvador on March 19, 2025. (Photo by MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have long presented themselves as crusaders of justice battling the scourge of transnational criminal gangs. Earlier this year, the Trump administration declared MS-13—a violent Salvadoran gang that originated in the U.S.—and other Latin American criminal groups to be “terrorist” organizations.

The narrative hit a cinematic apogee earlier this month when Trump swept up a klatch of Venezuelans he said were hardened gangsters, paired them up with some alleged members of MS-13 and sent them down south to be detained in Bukele’s “terrorism” prison.

The truth turns out to be much messier. Not only did Trump deport Venezuelans who were likely completely innocent, but also a specific MS-13 member who is emblematic of alleged corruption at the highest ranks of the Salvadoran government: a man called “Greñas.”

The importance of Greñas, whose legal name is Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, lies in what he knows. According to a federal indictment, as a leader of MS-13, Greñas was involved in secret negotiations between the gang and Bukele’s government, aimed at lowering gang violence in exchange for political support. Bukele denies the negotiations ever took place, but has long sought to get ahold of high-ranking members of MS-13 who participated, working to keep such figures out of the hands of the United States before they can have their day in open court. The Bukele government has also resisted extraditing a number of MS-13 leaders requested by the U.S.

Had Greñas’s case gone forward in the U.S., the sordid links between Bukele and the gang he is famous for warring against may have been aired publicly. Instead, federal charges were dismissed four days before his expulsion due to “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations,” according to a recently unsealed Justice Department document. The Justice Department initially requested the document be sealed because its release “could cause harm to the government’s relationship” with El Salvador.

“These arrangements were the result of intensive and delicate negotiations between the United States and El Salvador,” a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge two weeks ago.

Greñas’s Arrest and Rendition

Last year, Lopez-Larios was hiding out in Mexico, wanted by the U.S. on terrorism charges for his role as a top leader in MS-13. In June 2024, a quick and secretive operation led to his arrest: He was found by Mexican authorities, placed on an airplane, and quickly handed over to FBI and Homeland Security agents at the Houston airport. Lopez-Larios, whose alias is “Greñas,” had been a highly sought-after target for the U.S. government.

His arrest was “a significant achievement for law enforcement and another crucial step in the dismantling of this international criminal enterprise,” said the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York at the time, adding that Lopez-Larios would “soon face a reckoning in a federal courtroom.”

But despite being a high-value target and a founding leader of MS-13, earlier this month on March 11, the U.S. government dropped all charges against him. Four days later, he was on an airplane to El Salvador.

The same day, Trump had signed an executive order, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law, allowing the government to detain and expel citizens of “an enemy nation.” Greñas was among more than 250 people the Trump administration had placed on airplanes to El Savador, despite a federal judge ruling—as the planes were mid-air—a temporary block. The majority of the people expelled were men from Venezuela, accused of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua. Without proof, Trump has claimed that Tren de Aragua members “infiltrated” the U.S. at the direction of the Venezuelan government. Recent reporting has revealed that some of the Venezuelan men expelled to El Salvador likely had no ties to the gang, and were sent there on dubious evidence with no due process.

He was identified when Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele posted a video on X of the detention of nearly 300 immigrants from the U.S., in which Greñas is visible. Trump expelled 22 other Salvadorans, including another MS-13 member, César Eliseo Sorto-Amaya.

The Trump administration has refused to disclose details of the expulsions, and a Justice Department document from March 16, said the operation is “on-going and incomplete,” nodding at the administration’s desire for further, similar expulsions to the Central American country.

Greñas, according to federal court records, was familiar with negotiations between Bukele’s government and MS-13, aimed at lowering violence in El Salvador. Those 2019 negotiations, the U.S. Justice Department alleges, led to concessions to top MS-13 leadership — like financial incentives and territorial control of certain areas in El Salvador — in exchange for significant political support to Bukele’s party. By expelling Greñas to El Salvador and dismissing his charges, the U.S. has now gotten rid of a valuable target in its war against MS-13, while also cozying up to Bukele.

“One of the worries that Bukele had is what these gang leaders could say in U.S. courts,” said Ana María Méndez Dardón, director for Central America for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). “Especially what type of information they could reveal that might implicate Bukele.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment from Drop Site. The State Department referred questions to DHS and the Justice Department. The Eastern District of New York had no comment beyond the public court filings.

“This was a political negotiation,” said Ivania Cruz, a Salvadoran human rights attorney. “[The Trump administration] gave Bukele just enough so that they could make this negotiation happen, which was to take in the 238 Venezuelan migrants.”

Trump is still holding onto other valuable co-defendants, who may hold information about Bukele’s alleged corruption. Eight high-value Ranfla leaders, some accused of actively participating in negotiations with the Salvadoran government, remain in U.S. custody. They are accused in the Brooklyn federal court of a mix of crimes, including conspiracy to support terrorists and to commit acts of terrorism, conspiracy to finance terrorism, narco-terrorism, racketeering, and/or smuggling.

Greñas’s rendition also appeared to have an immediate effect on the remaining senior MS-13 figures in U.S. custody. Just three days after Greñas’s’s rendition, two major MS-13 leaders, Marlon Antonio Menjivar-Portillo and Jorge Alexander De La Cruz, quickly pleaded guilty, court records show. De La Cruz, alias “Cruger” has been identified by U.S. authorities as a top MS-13 leader, who personally negotiated with Bukele government officials. Their defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

What Does Greñas Know?

Greñas is an alleged member of the “Ranfla Nacional,” the name given to the MS-13 “board of directors.” Bukele has consistently denied the negotiations with the gangs ever took place. But explosive revelations from El Faro showed that starting in 2019, two high-ranking Bukele administration officials secretly snuck into Salvadoran prisons, alongside masked men, to meet with incarcerated MS-13 leaders. Members of the Ranfla met multiple times with Osiris Luna, the national director of prisons, and Carlos Marroquín, the director of the Social Fabric government office.

During the negotiations with Luna and Marroquín, the gang’s goal was to “maintain the power and influence of MS-13 and obtain benefits from the government of El Salvador,” a Justice Department indictment reads. In exchange, MS-13 agreed to reduce the number of public murders, “which politically benefited the government of El Salvador, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate.”

More importantly, MS-13 agreed to provide political support to Bukele’s party in the lead-up to the consequential legislative elections in 2021, U.S. prosecutors allege, in exchange for greater benefits from the government. Those elections led to a sweeping victory for Bukele’s party.

In 2021, Reuters reported that Luna and Marroquín were set to be indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for collaborating with organized criminal groups. It is unclear if the charges exist; if they do, they are likely sealed. In December 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Luna and Marroquín for their alleged “corruption.” According to OFAC, the two officials engaged in “covert negotiations between government officials and the criminal organization,” in order to secure a secret truce with gang leadership. The Treasury Department also alleged that in 2020, Bukele’s administration provided financial incentives to MS-13 to reduce gang violence in exchange for “political support.”

According to Méndez Dardón from WOLA, the U.S. sanctions on these two officials are significant. “This shows there is enough evidence that the reduction of violence in El Salvador was compromised — there were political negotiations between the gangs and the government of El Salvador.”

In 2021, after the decisive legislative elections that gave Bukele’s party a supermajority in the government, his administration removed the country’s attorney general and five members of the Supreme Court, after publicly stating they would engage in extraditions to the U.S. of Ranfla members. The Bukele administration also dismantled a unit of Salvadoran prosecutors investigating the meetings with the gang members.

Then, according to El Faro’s reporting, the truce between the Bukele government and MS-13 seems to have collapsed in 2022, leading to a wave of murders. That year, Bukele announced a “state of exception” to wipe out the criminal groups, which cast aside due process and led to a wave of alleged human rights abuses.

“The homicides were high and they began to go down,” said Cruz, the Salvadoran human rights attorney, explaining that the majority of the gang members in Bukele’s prisons are low-ranking members. But soon, violence in the country took on a different form. “But what happened instead? Disappearances and clandestine burials began to go up. You wouldn’t have a killing one day, but you had five disappearances in a day.”

From Civil War to Gang Warfare

The life story of Greñas in many ways embodies the true saga of gang violence over the past several decades. Born in El Salvador, he fled to California at a young age, escaping violence fueled by U.S.-backed death squads. The U.S. drug war produced more instability in Central and South America and sowed the groundwork for gangs to flourish inside the United States. MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles, not in El Salvador, in the 1980s. In 1999, Greñas, like many of his fellow gang leaders, was deported back to his home country.

In 2004, he became one of the original “Twelve Apostles of the Devil,” a group established in a Salvadoran prison to lead the gang. The Twelve Apostles was later renamed the “Ranfla.” In the years that followed, Greñas spent his time in and out of prison in El Salvador. News reports and U.S. Justice Department documents reveal that the first negotiations between MS-13 and the Salvadoran government, led by the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front took place in 2012, to establish a gang truce in exchange for improved prison conditions. Forty-six-year-old Greñas was instrumental in those negotiations from prison, the U.S. Justice Department alleged.

In 2015, that truce collapsed. MS-13 blamed the U.S. government; they believed the U.S. pressured El Salvador to end it in order to continue receiving financial support.

Greñas was released from prison and eventually fled to the U.S. In 2017, U.S. officials deported him to El Salvador, where he was sentenced to 143 years in prison. In 2020, he was released from Salvadoran prison on a legal technicality. Months later, the U.S. government unsealed an indictment against him and other top MS-13 leaders, accusing them of federal terrorism and narco-terrorism charges. The U.S. lodged an INTERPOL Red Notice and declared him a fugitive. He was arrested last year by Mexican officials in the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, and was turned over to U.S. officials in Texas.

Although Greñas may hold information about negotiations with the Salvadoran government, Cruz said, he was not a key negotiator with Bukele’s administration in 2019.

“The U.S. government is running its foreign policy, as always, to benefit themselves. They are not going to hand over everything Bukele wants,” said Cruz. “I do not think it is beneficial for the U.S. to turn over the other leaders, because it’s another way to manipulate Bukele — because they have information against Bukele and they are able to continue using him for their own interests.”

Federal U.S. court records reviewed by Drop Site reveal Greñas was held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn federal prison, due to threats from another MS-13 faction in the prison.

On March 11, federal prosecutors filed the sealed letter requesting all charges against him be dismissed for “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations.” According to the Bureau of Prisons registry, he was transferred out of federal prison custody that same day.

The Board

So far, only two Salvadoran men expelled to El Salvador have been identified — both alleged members of MS-13. The first is Greñas. The second is César Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, a lower-ranking MS-13 member. Although Sorto-Amaya is not accused of being a Ranfla leader, he was still highly-sought by the Salvadoran government: in April 2024, he was sentenced in El Salvador, in absentia, to 50 years in prison.

In a secretive operation in February, the Salvadoran government provided U.S. agents with Sorto-Amaya’s location in New Jersey, according to a Homeland Security document. U.S. officials arrived at the address and arrested him.

Of the 27 members of MS-13’s “board of directors,” at least nine have been in U.S. custody, including Greñas. The majority were arrested in Mexico and handed off to U.S. authorities, and none have been extradited from El Salvador. The U.S. has requested the extradition of other top MS-13 leaders believed to be in Salvadoran custody, to no avail. The Justice Department previously accused Bukele’s government of blocking the extraditions, allegedly due to the 2019 pact.

The most recent MS-13 leader to be taken into U.S. custody is Francisco Javier Roman-Baralles, alias “Veterano de Tribus,” an MS-13 leader who was key in establishing the links between the gang and Mexican drug cartels. This month, the Mexican government announced an operation that led to his arrest. The following day, the Mexican government turned him over to the U.S.

Bukele’s government has also reportedly been attempting to prevent Ranfla leaders from revealing information about the 2019 negotiations.

One of the most jarring examples of the Salvadoran government attempting to keep MS-13 leaders quiet is the case of Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “El Crook.” Crook was sitting in a Salvadoran prison when, in 2021, U.S. officials unsealed the indictment against him and his co-defendants. He, like Greñas, was accused of being a member of the “Ranfla Nacional” and an original “Twelve Apostles” leader. The U.S. quickly lodged an INTERPOL Red Notice and later submitted an extradition request.

However, tensions between U.S. officials and El Salvador flared when — despite the INTERPOL arrest and extradition request — Salvadoran officials then quietly released Canales-Rivera from prison that same year. U.S. federal prosecutors alleged in a 2023 letter that he was personally escorted by high-level Salvadoran government officials, “housed in a luxury apartment and other locations, provided with a firearm, and then driven to the Guatemalan border,” where they facilitated his smuggling out of El Salvador. According to El Faro, Marroquín, who participated in the negotiations with MS-13, was the official who “personally” took Canales-Rivera out of prison. Canales-Rivera fled and hid in Guatemala and Mexico.

After the U.S. prosecutors’ letter was published, the Salvadoran government engaged in a desperate attempt to re-capture Canales-Rivera. According to later reporting, the Bukele government discussed a plan to pay a Mexican cartel $1 million to find Canales-Rivera and turn him over to El Salvador.

Unfortunately for the Bukele administration, the Mexican government beat them to the punch. He was arrested in November 2023 by Mexican officials and turned over to the U.S. two days later. According to the Bureau of Prisons registry, he is currently detained in a federal prison in Philadelphia.