It was three months since President Donald Trump had returned to office and begun his major immigration crackdown. At the White House, the mood was celebratory as he welcomed the leader of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime, and so do we, and it's very, very effective. And I want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president.
Bukele, who'd once called himself the world's coolest dictator, had become a key player for Trump.
And we actually turned the murder capital of the world—that was the... journalists call it.
Right. Murder capital of the world.
Into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. Sometimes they say that we imprison thousands. I like to say that we actually liberated millions.
That's very good. Who gave him that line? Do you think I can use that?
Bukele was giving President Trump much more than a punchline. He'd opened the doors of El Salvador's notorious prison—known as CECOT—for planeloads of deportees that the Trump administration had swept up and accused of being gang members.
CECOT is the largest prison in the Americas and is infamous for its harsh conditions.
The Trump administration deported more than 200 Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. to El Salvador, placed in a notorious high-security prison.
Despite revelations most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. or proven gang affiliations, and concerns about harsh treatment, both presidents touted it as a win.
It was pretty obvious what Trump was getting out of this deal. It was much less obvious what Bukele was doing.
Over the past year, "Frontline" and reporters from the El Salvador news outlet "El Faro" have been investigating what was behind the controversial deal.
La naturaleza del gobierno de Bukele es mantener en secreto cosas.
And what Bukele stood to gain.
All you know about him is his propaganda. The truth is quite different from what he says.
En esta imagen, ¿reconoces quién está encapuchado?
Bukele nos quiere presos por haber revelado algo que le molestó.
¿Saben qué? Me tiene sin cuidado que me llamen dictador. Prefiero que me llamen dictador a ver cómo matan a los salvadoreños en las calles.
Bukele nos ha declarado, a los periodistas de "El Faro", sus enemigos desde hace mucho tiempo.
Pero la realidad es que Bukele está tratando de encubrir su pasado. La realidad es que necesita que Estados Unidos lo ayude a encubrir su pasado.
Y esa historia no la hemos terminado de contar todavía.
The roots of the deal between Presidents Trump and Bukele trace back to their first meeting. The two leaders were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
Bukele was promising to help Trump with one of his signature issues: stemming the flow of immigrants into the U.S.
Bukele decides, you know, he is going to take responsibility for the issue of migration from El Salvador.
It's a great honor to be with the president of El Salvador.
And that's around the time where you start seeing Bukele coming into Trump's orbit, and connections forming between the Bukele team and Trump's world.
The American president was also particularly impressed with the way Bukele was cracking down on El Salvador's notoriously violent gangs.
The president has done an incredible job with MS-13. He realizes what a threat they are. They have been very, very tough.
Both just have this sort of irreverence that I think appeals to people who see them as not the average politician. And I think both respect, at the end of the day, more than anything, power. And so, when they see others who have it, they respect that.
We're very happy to be here, and we're hoping that this meeting will only strengthen our relationship even more. And I think it will, because, you know, we're—President Trump is very nice and cool, and I'm nice and cool, too.
Bukele was emerging as one of Latin America's most popular leaders, building his reputation on being extremely tough on gangs.
El Salvador nunca ha sido un país pacífico.
¿Verdad? Desde que yo comencé a ejercer periodismo, siempre ha sido El Salvador un país violento.
Carlos Martínez is a reporter at El Salvador's premier investigative news outlet, "El Faro." He and his brother, Óscar, have been reporting on Bukele and the country's gang problems for years.
Nunca había visto lo que pasó en 2015. Aquello era peor que una guerra abierta.
Las calles estaban llenas de cadáveres. Las morgues en El Salvador ya no daban abasto.
At the peak of the violence in 2015, El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world. The brutal MS-13 gang was battling its rival, Barrio 18.
One of the most dangerous countries on Earth. A place where criminal gangs control entire neighborhoods.
Bukele had just become mayor of the capital, San Salvador, the epicenter of the violence.
Cuando Bukele llega a la alcaldía de la capital, el país atravesaba probablemente uno de sus momentos más violentos de su historia. Que no es poco decir en un país como El Salvador.
At first, Bukele's approach to the violence was less confrontational, promoting social services and community building.
His political discourse was that we needed to have long-time solutions for those communities overtaken by gangs to have another kind of life, where kids would have more options than just be part of a gang or be killed. In almost every single issue, he was very progressive.
We organize every year a Central American journalism conference. When he was mayor of San Salvador, we invited him. He came. That talk in which he spoke was moderated by Carlos Martínez, one of our reporters.
Yo creo... que lo que tenemos en El Salvador es que el tejido social está roto... y lo que tenemos que hacer entonces es reconstruir el tejido social. Que estos jóvenes tengan oportunidades y que el tema de la violencia no sea un tema que se va a solucionar con más violencia...
He focused on revitalizing the city center.
Este día, damos por finalizada la revitalización total del corazón del Centro Histórico de San Salvador.
Crime and violence there dropped. Bukele's popularity rose.
Que Dios los bendiga a todos. Y que Dios bendiga a nuestro hermoso país, El Salvador. Muchas gracias.
And in 2019, after just one term as mayor, he ran for president.
Lo primero que hace Bukele es presentarse como un outsider, que iba a romper con ese pasado corrupto que había administrado la democracia en El Salvador desde la guerra civil. Y era un discurso que los salvadoreños se morían por oír. Y de esa idea, Bukele construyó su imagen: "El Vengador". Y consiguió transmitir este mensaje de una manera muy poderosa y la gente se lo compró a raudales. Sacó más votos que el resto de los partidos juntos.
Ciudadano Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez... quedáis en posesión del cargo de presidente constitucional de la República de El Salvador.
La gente votó a Bukele en 2019 porque ya estaban hartos de las otras ofertas electorales. Había que ser un loco para seguir votando por esos partidos políticos. No solo nos habían convertido en uno de los países más homicidas del planeta, sino que se habían robado todo lo que se pudieron robar.
Within weeks of taking office, Bukele made a dramatic announcement.
El plan fue presentado ayer, es un plan completo... Hay elementos que no se pueden revelar evidentemente... Vamos a hacer valer el Estado donde el Estado debe de estar... Vamos a controlar los territorios donde más flujo de dinero le genera a las pandillas...
He was now promoting a tougher approach. He vowed he wouldn't compromise or negotiate with the gangs.
Yo no he recibido ninguna comunicación de Mara Salvatrucha para buscar diálogo y tampoco estamos dispuestos a dialogar con grupos criminales.
Bukele vowed to be different than the leaders who had ruled El Salvador for decades, the leaders who had been, you know, convicted in bribery cases, who had committed graft, and who had been shown to actually be negotiating with the leaders of the powerful street gangs that ruled much of El Salvador. He declares that he is going to tackle crime and fight the gangs with this new plan, the Plan Control Territorial. The details of this plan are very opaque. But what we know is that he's deploying more police and soldiers around the country.
The country does start to get safer.
In the first months of Bukele's Territorial Control Plan, over 5,000 people were arrested; the murder rate hit historic lows. To the reporters at "El Faro", these results seemed too good to be true.
We knew that there was something strange going on. You can't become a president and the next day reduce so dramatically the homicide rates without something tricky going on.
As the El Faro reporters started investigating, another investigation was taking place that would eventually help shed light on what was behind Bukele's crackdown. In the U.S., federal authorities were fighting their own campaign against MS-13, which had taken root in many American cities.
MS-13, the notorious street gang responsible for the wave of violence that has terrorized this community.
MS-13 is an international crime cartel—that's not an overstatement. It's based in El Salvador; it has rapidly become one of America's largest and deadliest street gangs.
My name is Daniel Brunner. I was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. My responsibility was MS-13 cases in the state of New Jersey. MS-13 is one of the most extraordinarily violent gangs that's out there. I've seen some horrible crime scenes in my years. You had a quadruple homicide on Long Island. You have homicides in New Jersey, in Virginia, Maryland.
This is now the tenth murder here in Nassau County since 2016 due to the gang MS-13.
As in El Salvador, the U.S. had a tough-talking president.
It is the policy of this administration to dismantle, decimate, and eradicate MS-13. One by one, we're liberating our American towns.
I got a call in 2019. This U.S. Attorney said, "Hey, would you be interested in joining this new task force that we're putting together that is going to be taking out MS-13 from the top down?"
Task Force Vulcan was created by Attorney General Barr under the direction of President Trump.
What we've been in here discussing with the president is Project—Task Force Vulcan which is targeting the higher-level players in the MS-13 operations.
This is probably the meanest, worst gang anywhere in the world, the MS-13 group. They're sick, they're deranged, and we're taking care of it.
MS-13 members in America, they said, were receiving orders from the gang leadership in El Salvador—many of whom had been thrown in prison there.
Taking out the leadership in El Salvador and bringing them to United States changes the entire dynamic of the organization. There's leaders on the streets, and then there's leaders in jail. We wanted them both.
Our goal was to get them out of those jails, into U.S. jails, cutting the head off the snake.
Over the next year, Brunner and other agents worked with investigators in El Salvador to build cases to extradite the jailed MS-13 leaders. It became a far-reaching effort.
The team was put together to be able to look at all MS-13 criminal activity, including political corruption, including their influence in government activities.
Task Force Vulcan's investigation would soon intersect with "El Faro's" reporting.
Conocí a los agentes de Vulcano que estaban involucrados en El Salvador en la persecución de las pandillas. Y esa gente estaba muy interesada en mi conocimiento del fenómeno de pandillas y en el bagaje que tenía investigando este fenómeno. Y, a medida que pasaba el tiempo, conversábamos con distintas fuentes y, dentro de la embajada de los Estados Unidos, conversábamos con los agentes de Vulcano, con mi fuente... Un día... me llamó una fuente de la embajada de los Estados Unidos y me dice lo siguiente: "Creo que tengo algo que te interesa. Necesito que lo recojas esta tarde." Pero esa tarde yo no podía, entonces llamé a mi hermano Óscar y le digo: "Mira, Óscar, ¿vos podés moverte ya para donde está la fuente?"
Yo llego donde esa fuente, en una colonia de lujo, y él en la calle me entrega un sobre manila. Y, desde que salgo de esa colonia, noté que me venía siguiendo un carro. Estábamos acostumbrados a que el organismo de inteligencia del Estado de El Salvador nos persiguiera siempre. Yo doy varias vueltas en el redondel para quitarme el seguimiento y me lo quito y me voy. Cuando llego a la casa y abro el sobre, no lo podía creer. Sentí que un rayo me cruzaba el cuerpo.
Inside the envelope were surprising details about how Bukele had been getting his results.
Eran cientos de páginas de evidencia, desde las cárceles de El Salvador, de que el gobierno de Bukele estaba negociando con la Mara Salvatrucha. Documentos del propio Gobierno de Nayib Bukele que revelaban, que explicaban, que detallaban y que nombraban quiénes estaban entrando a las cárceles para sostener un pacto con los líderes de la Mara Salvatrucha 13.
El día siguiente recibí una llamada de esa fuente diciéndome, a través de una tercera persona, que ya no lo volviera a contactar, que mi teléfono estaba pinchado y que, al parecer, él tenía seguimiento. Eso es hacer una investigación bajo muchísima presión.
The documents included prison records showing dozens of covert meetings between government officials and gang leaders since 2019; as well as intelligence reports and correspondences detailing deals for the reduction in homicides, political support, and prison privileges.
There was a pact between Bukele and the gangs. That is the main reason behind the huge drop in homicide rates. It was also an electoral pact. Part of the deal was to control the inhabitants of the communities the gangs controlled, to vote for Mr. Bukele. The gangs guaranteed Mr. Bukele that Salvadorans would vote for him in exchange of some benefits.
In the prison logbooks, the reporters also found the name of Bukele's close aid: Carlos Marroquín.
Carlos Marroquín is a director of an institution called Social Tissue, which on paper, this is the institution in charge of reconstructing the broken tissue of these communities that were submerged by violence. Carlos Marroquín, this is what our reporting tells us, has been one of the main links between Mr. Bukele and the gangs. He is the liaison with the gangs.
Para verificarlos, seguimos con fuentes de centros penitenciarios que nos confirmaron los ingresos, custodios... Llevamos los documentos para verificar su autenticidad. Conseguimos fuentes dentro de las pandillas que nos confirmaran ese tipo de negociaciones.
En septiembre de 2020, publicamos: "Gobierno de Bukele lleva más de un año negociando con la Mara Salvatrucha 13. Apoyo electoral y reducción de homicidios". La noche que publicamos ese material, tuvo decenas de miles de lecturas. Después de esa publicación, Bukele reaccionó iracundo.
Entonces, ¿qué acreditamos? Que El Faro mentía. ¿En dónde? ¡En su artículo! Y en esos supuestos documentos, que no son documentos oficiales. Son fotografías falsas de supuestos documentos oficiales.
Nos acusó de... de ser mentirosos, de estar trabajando para la oposición política. Nos acusó de un montón de cosas.
Y van a ver que "El Faro" mintió. Y yo puedo decir una cosa: El Faro no ha probar una de sus aseveraciones... Pero al pueblo salvadoreño, que es el que nos importa, les pregunto: Si mintieron aquí, ¿en qué están diciendo la verdad?
The documents and "El Faro" reports contradicted what Bukele had been saying publicly and to the international media about his contacts with the gangs.
Would you ever negotiate with them?
Well, because you are giving them... you are giving them legitimacy.
Neither Bukele nor Marroquín nor anyone from the administration would agree to an interview for this film. On local TV, Carlos Marroquín brushed off "El Faro's" reporting.
No hay pruebas reales, pues. Todo lo que ellos han escrito o están diciendo está... Es un supuesto. Eso es un supuesto.
But the "El Faro" reporters later managed to interview two leaders of the Barrio 18 gang—MS-13's main rival—who'd fled the country and said they'd made deals with Bukele's allies for years, including to help get him elected mayor of San Salvador.
Mi nombre es Carlos Cartagena. Pues, todos me conocen como Charli.
Charli, Carlos Cartagena, es uno de los más famosos pandilleros de El Salvador desde hace décadas.
Ellos pidieron el apoyo, pues, de nuestra gente, de nuestras comunidades, de nuestras colonias para poder elegirlo a él, ¿verdad? Como alcalde.
¿Cuánto dinero les entregaron por el respaldo?
Entregaron un cuarto de millón.
No, eso era repartido. Eso era repartido entre las dos pandillas.
El partido de Nayib Bukele, en ese entonces el FMLN, pagó, según Charli nos contó, para que obligaran a la población bajo su control a votar por Nayib Bukele para que fuera alcalde de San Salvador y por el candidato presidencial de ese partido.
Además de entrevistar a Charli, nosotros entrevistamos a otro líder de Barrio 18: Liro Man. Él lo único que nos pidió es que no reveláramos su nombre real ni su rostro porque cree que, en su circunstancia actual en donde está, eso lo podría afectar.
The two gang leaders told "El Faro" that after Bukele became president in 2019, they were allowed to hold meetings with their leaders in prisons.
Sí. No, es que mira, decían de una vez al mes, nosotros quedamos que una vez al mes iban a entrar. Y, a Izalco, dos veces al mes.
¿A usted no le revisaban las bolsas?
Nada... Ni nos—Ni, mira—No nos revisaban ni para entrar ni para salir.
"El Faro" reporters showed one of the gang leaders pictures they'd obtained of masked men entering the prison.
En esta imagen, ¿reconoces quién está encapuchado?
Pues, este es Marroquín, viejo.
En esta imagen, si la puedo expandir, ¿a estos personajes los reconoces?
