Rubio says another 17 people have been sent to a prison in El Salvador

The Trump administration expelled another 17 immigrants alleged without evidence or due process to be members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs to El Salvador Sunday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X Monday. 

“These criminals will no longer terrorize our communities and citizens,” Rubio said in the statement, adding that the group included “murderers and rapists.”

The move comes after a federal appeals court last week upheld a court order barring the Trump administration from expelling detained immigrants suspected of gang affiliation, but not convicted or charged with gang-affiliated criminal activity, to a maximum-security Salvadoran mega prison under the Alien Enemies Act. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said in a post on BlueSky that if the Trump administration is “not violating the AEA court order,” this action means “these people had final orders of removal.” He added, however, that he “wouldn’t trust any allegations of gang membership.” 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration invoked the 1798 wartime authority to expel some 260 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a notoriously opaque facility that prevents prisoners, largely suspected or convicted gang members, from having contact with the outside world. Family members and immigration attorneys of the deportees maintain that many if not all of the men were not gang-affiliated and were unfairly accused based on their tattoos.

Human rights advocates previously told Salon that El Salvador’s prison system is “no place for migrants” because of its sprawling list of alleged human rights violations, including instances of extreme overcrowding, torture and denial of access to adequate medical care. 

“It’s likely that, given how widespread throughout the Salvador criminal justice system these violations are, the kinds of suffering that we have documented in our jails would be similar to the conditions faced at [the Terrorism Confinement Center],” said Juanita Goebertus, director of the Human Rights Watch Americas division.