MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
With the story of an extraordinary offer from the U.S. secretary of state to the president of El Salvador. Now, here's the backdrop - earlier this year, the Trump administration sent millions of dollars to El Salvador. In return, the U.S. got access to El Salvador's most notorious prison to detain Venezuelan immigrants.
But Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele also wanted something else - the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody. Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed, even though some of these gang members were informants under the protection of the Justice Department. Now, this is according to a new investigation from The Washington Post. John Hudson shares a byline on that story, which is headlined "Rubio Promised To Betray U.S. Informants To Get Trump's El Salvador Prison Deal." Hey, John.
JOHN HUDSON: Hey, good to be with you.
KELLY: Lots of threads to this story, but let's pick a starting point of March 13. President Trump had been wanting to deport hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to this prison called CECOT. He gets his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, looped in. Rubio hops on a phone call with the president of El Salvador. What happens on the call?
HUDSON: The president of El Salvador on the call is asking Secretary Rubio to give his word that these nine MS-13 members would be sent to El Salvador. Rubio tells him, you will get these men, but there is an obstacle. Some of these MS-13 members were informants to the United States government in a ongoing Justice Department investigation into MS-13. Rubio then says that the president is going to get Attorney General Pam Bondi to nix the informant relationship that exists with those men and remove the protective status that they enjoyed and then send them to El Salvador.
KELLY: Why does Bukele - President Bukele of El Salvador - why does he want these specific nine guys?
HUDSON: The El Salvador government was known to make deals with MS-13 in order to help achieve the country's historic drop in violence. There's been concern that if more information gets out about the deals between the government and MS-13, that it would tarnish Bukele's tough-on-crime reputation.
KELLY: So just to go to the central point here, let me ask you to unpack your headline, that Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants. Explain the betray part of that headline.
HUDSON: So a core part of an informant relationship is that the United States says, you know, if you give us some information, we're not going to turn around and send you to the very government that you are giving us information about. That just doesn't happen. That's the reason why people who are in U.S. custody agree to cooperate with the United States - they get something in return. And so for...
KELLY: They are promised protection backed up by the U.S. government.
HUDSON: That's right, and that's why current and former Justice Department officials said that this was so concerning to them. You know, it imperils U.S. informants, people who were providing information to the Justice Department. And also, when the United States reneges on agreements that it makes to informants, it makes it more difficult for it to recruit informants in the future if its credibility is on the line.
KELLY: So how does the Trump administration defend this? What has been their response to your reporting?
HUDSON: Essentially, it's defending the deal that Rubio made. They got, you know, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants out of the United States through this deal. It accuses those migrants of being members of Tren de Aragua, a gang that was founded in Venezuela, and it rejects that anything that it's doing is going to amount to letting up on MS-13. Obviously, there are some in the Justice Department who feel this has really undercut the ongoing investigation against MS-13, and so they dispute the defense from the State Department.
KELLY: And have you had a response from the government of El Salvador?
HUDSON: The government of El Salvador did not respond to repeated requests for comment. We did talk to a lobbyist for El Salvador who is in the United States and said that what Bukele was asking for were MS-13 terrorists, and they belong in El Salvador, where they would be brought to justice.
KELLY: John Hudson. He covers the State Department and national security for The Washington Post. Thank you.
HUDSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
