The United States reiterates its request to drop charges against the leader of the MS-13

Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do in favor of his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.

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 his 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 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.
Critics of Trump who are defending Arevalo-Chavez’s rights see the move to deport him as a way to prevent him from testifying in a US court, or becoming a federal government cooperator, to limit disclosures about Bukele’s past ties to the gang as much as possible.

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 April 1 but not unsealed until Thursday – said federal prosecutors want to dismiss charges against Arevalo-Chavez for “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations.”

Prosecutors added that “geopolitical and national security concerns of the United States” and said allowing “the prosecution of the defendant to proceed in the first instance in El Salvador” was also a factor.

Arevalo-Chavez is still in the US, with his attorneys requesting more information about the reasons behind the dismissal of charges and the intended deportation.

The judge ruled in April to not relocate him anywhere, preventing his being placed into the custody of the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which would lead to his deportation.