Marco Rubio says El Salvador’s president agrees to house US criminals in his country’s jails
Mark Schiefelbein / POOL AP / AFP
(WASHINGTON) — United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and said the Central American nation has agreed to not only take in deported foreign nationals who committed crimes — but also jailed American citizens and permanent residents.
Rubio called the agreement “an act of extraordinary friendship,” on Monday.
“[Bukele] has agreed to accept for deportation any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal, from any nationality — be they MS-13 or Tren de Araqua — and house them in his jails,” Rubio declared. “He has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those of U.S. citizens and legal residents.”
Rubio called the deal the “most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world” and said, “no country has ever made an offer of friendship such as this.”
“We are profoundly grateful. I spoke to President Trump about this earlier today. And it’s just one more sign of what an incredible friend we have here in President Bukele and in the people of El Salvador,” Rubio said after they met for more than two-and-a-half hours.
“More details will be forthcoming” about the agreement struck between the United States and El Salvador, said Rubio, before taking an opportunity to praise Bukele’s leadership — describing his polarizing clampdown on El Salvador’s security as “difficult decisions” that had to be made.
President Trump has previously mused about sending repeated offenders abroad, even if they are lawfully in the United States. The president will now need to clear several legal hurdles, given that the Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments,” broadly considered to include exile.
(WASHINGTON) — After senior U.S. military officials told Congress they do not know yet how much the surge of active-duty military forces to the southern border with Mexico and the buildup of infrastructure to house thousands of migrants at Guantanamo might end up costing, two Democratic senators on Friday requested more details from the Pentagon.
Following a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday with the commanders of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command, Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting specific details by Feb. 27 regarding the costs, impact on readiness and impact on morale that would result from the new missions along the border and at Guantanamo.
“We are concerned about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) immigration-related operations at the southern border and at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay — including the implications of these operations for the military’s budget, readiness, and morale,” the senators said in the lengthy letter requesting specific details from the Pentagon.
“DoD’s support for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been expensive for American taxpayers, with some DoD expenses costing over three times more than when DHS performs the same function, while also posing “an unacceptable risk” to units’ readiness,” they wrote.
“In all, the Trump administration is militarizing the country’s immigration enforcement system in an apparent attempt to signal toughness,” they added. ” But this political stunt will come at a high cost; it risks diverting DoD’s resources away from its vital mission in ways that compromise our national security.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORTHCOM, and Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of SOUTHCOM, were asked about the potential impact on training and readiness for the forces sent to the border and what the financial costs were for the surge as well as the construction of migrant housing at the naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba.
Guillot told the committee that the number of active-duty forces now on the Southern border with Mexico had risen to 5,000 and said he expected the number to continue to rise.
Included in the 5,000 are the additional troops deployed to join the 2,500 federalized National Guardsmen and reservists who had been serving as part of a border mission established by the Trump administration in 2018.
Meanwhile, the most recent deployment to the border took place this week as 500 Army soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York, arrived at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to establish a coordinating headquarters for the border mission. An additional 1,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are awaiting orders to deploy to the border in support of that unit, according to a U.S. official.
Asked about potential costs for the operation on the border, Guillot explained that his command has “not appropriated funds for the Southwest border, and we’ve never had reprogramming or pass through funding. This is all done through the Department Comptroller and the services.”
The NORTHCOM commander also told the committee that he did not believe that the cycling of troops to the southern border would impact any scheduled training exercises being held by his command though he noted there might be a reduction in the one day of weekly training provided to deployed forces conducting jobs outside of their normal specialized roles.
“I think that specifically in the helicopters and in our intel specialties that are conducting missions on the southern border, those are exactly in line with their trained specialty,” said Guillot. “However, there are, I certainly recognize there are areas where they are cross-trained and they are not getting immediate benefit to their primary specialty in about half of those roles.”
At the naval base at Guantanamo, 500 Marines have been deployed to erect tents and facilities that could potentially house as many as 30,000 migrants while they await processing to be returned to their home countries.
Adm. Holsey described the new construction at Guantanamo as a “phased” approach currently targeting housing for up to 2,500 migrants and said the potential expansion to 30,000 migrants would depend on the Department of Homeland Security’s flow of migrants to the base.
“We’re going to build it up and as we understand how large we’ll get, we’ll have a better focus on the price,” said Holey when asked how much those operations could end up costing.
He added that the Department of Homeland Security is providing security for the detained migrants and noted that any current military costs in expanding facilities at the base are coming from the military services’ existing budgets.
According to Holsey, there are currently 93 deported migrants currently housed at Guantanamo, with 63 of them being housed at the main prison facility that used to house hundreds of enemy combatants seized during the War on Terror. The remainder are all being housed in the newly expanded housing that falls under the base’s Migrant Operations Center.
(WASHINGTON) — The funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, will be held on Jan. 9 at Washington National Cathedral.
Carter, the son of a peanut farmer who was elected the nation’s 39th president, passed away surrounded by family at his home in Plains, Georgia, just months after he became the longest-lived former chief executive in U.S. history.
President Joe Biden, who praised Carter as a “man of principle, faith, and humility,” has also marked Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning for the former Democratic president.
Biden said in March 2023 that Carter had asked him to deliver his eulogy. Their relationship spans decades, back to when Biden endorsed Carter for the presidency during Biden’s first term as a senator in 1976.
In remarks on Sunday evening, Biden spoke about Carter’s support for him and his family after his son Beau died of cancer. Carter was later diagnosed with metastatic melanoma.
“I think that what Jimmy Carter is an example of is just simple decency, simple decency,” Biden said as he reflected on that time in his life. “And I think that’s what the rest of the world looks to America for.”
Washington National Cathedral, situated just miles north of the White House, has been the site of several state funerals for former presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.
Carter is expected to be buried in Georgia next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, who died last year at the age of 96. Carter, who had been in hospice care, made a rare public appearance to attend his wife’s memorial service.
The couple previously spoke about being laid to rest together at their family residence, near the edge of a pond on the property where they fished together.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is directing all federal agencies to “promptly” begin preparations for large-scale layoffs and restructuring, and submit plans for doing do so by March 13, according to a new memo obtained by ABC News.
The memo, from White House budget director Russ Vought, and Charles Ezell, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, was issued Wednesday morning, and includes instructions for agencies to follow as they work to downsize their workforces, and in some cases, physical footprints.
The move could formally clear the way for the administration to begin dismantling or shrinking agencies like the Department of Education and will likely prompt a new flurry of lawsuits as the process takes shape.
“President Trump required that ‘Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.’ President Trump also directed that, no later than March 13, 2025, agencies develop Agency Reorganization Plans,” the memo states.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
