The White House has revealed how much the United States paid to El Salvador to take the Tren de Aragua gang members who were deported Sunday hours before a judge ruled against the deportation making it a contentious episode of Donald Trump’s ongoing deportation drive.
“The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us,” Salvador president Nayib Bukele said as his administration received 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently revealed that the US paid approximately $6 million for the detention of these terrorists, “And I would point out that is pennies on the dollar in comparison to the cost of life, and the cost it would impose on the American taxpayer to house these terrorists in maximum security prisons here in the United States of America,” Leavitt said.
Will the deportation be challenged?
US district judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to halt its deportations but the Donald Trump administration said by the time the order came, the planes crossed the US boundary and hence the order did not apply to them. Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport the members of the gang that had become active in several US states recently.
The judge said if the planes were already in the air, they should turn back. A New York Times report claimed that none of the planes in question landed in El Salvador before the judge’s order and one of them did not even leave American soil at that time.
El Salvador agreed to take the gang members and send them to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center which houses the worst of the worst gang members subjecting them to horrible treatment. Inmates remain locked for 23.5 hours a day and can leave their cells for 30 minutes to exercise, read the Bible and participate in online court proceedings. The inmates there do not receive visits and no workshops are held there to help the inmates return to society after their time in prison.
