The following is a transcript of episode 34 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes, published in the morning of Friday, June 20.
NOEM: President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally: Leave now. If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you. You will never return.
GRESSIER, HOST: In recent months, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been pumping commercials like this into social media in Guatemala. It’s not unlike three years ago, when Vice President Kamala Harris famously told prospective migrants in the country: “Do not come. Do not come.” This week, Noem made the regional rounds herself. The Trump administration seems to have found a political foothold with governments across Central America.
Deals across the region
On Thursday morning in Guatemala, Noem capped a trip to four Central American countries. She and Minister of Governance Francisco Jiménez, who oversees the National Civil Police, announced a biometric data- and intelligence-sharing agreement that Noem stated will increase anti-drug cooperation.
Like during Trump’s first term, Noem announced that both Guatemala and Honduras had again signed agreements to receive third-country deportees who otherwise would have sought asylum in the U.S. On Wednesday in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran and U.S. governments also reached a data-sharing agreement. This was a further de-escalation of tensions earlier this year stemming from Trump’s deportation agenda.
Noem is the second Trump cabinet official to travel to Central America. In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly traveled the region: El Salvador agreed to imprison migrants deported from the United States, whereas Guatemala agreed to be a point of transit for returnees. The Bernardo Arévalo administration has now expanded that initial deal to agree to process increased claims for refuge in Guatemala.
The DHS secretary also visited Panama and Costa Rica. In Panama City, she and President José Raúl Mulino took a victory lap on the claim that the Panamanian government has drastically reduced migration through the Darién Gap by 99 percent.
They also extended an agreement for the U.S. to pay another seven million dollars toward repatriation flights from Panama, publicly emphasizing Venezuelan and Colombian migrants.
In San José, the Costa Rican and U.S. governments announced that Costa Rica will join the U.S. Global Entry Program to boost tourism both ways between the countries. Noem announced that she had decided that President Rodrigo Chaves will be the first to be granted Global Entry status, underscoring his closeness to the Trump administration as he comes under intense scrutiny for corruption allegations.
Bukele Gets Trump to Toss the Work of Vulcan, the Task Force that Pursued MS-13
In the background is the fact that Chaves signed a constitutional amendment in May to allow extraditions from Costa Rica. The Tico Times noted that this closed a loophole allowing foreigners to avoid U.S. handcuffs by absconding to the country.Honduras threatened last year to denounce the treaty after evidence tying Castro’s circle to former narco-corruption emerged. But they stepped back in February and said they reached an agreement with Trump to respect the treaty.
El Faro English attended the DHS press conference in Guatemala City. We came with questions. But Noem didn’t take any, so we couldn’t ask about the U.S. government’s apparent non-prosecution of top Salvadoran gang leaders from the Mara Salvatrucha. More on that in our last segment.
A hit squad on foreign soil?
But first, to Costa Rica. On June 19, Roberto Samcam, a retired Nicaraguan Army Major, was murdered in front of his home in San José. Samcam, who had been in exile since 2018 and was stripped of his nationality two years ago, had accused the regime of committing extrajudicial executions during the 2018 repression.
Samcam had also alerted Nicaraguan refugees to a spy network targeting exiled opposition members in Costa Rica. The former military officer had warned Costa Rican intelligence authorities that he feared for his safety following his allegations against the Ortega government, Nicaragua Investiga reported.
Nicaraguan dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have not commented on the crime. The Costa Rican Legislative Assembly demanded that the Chaves administration speed up the investigation.
In a June 24 report by CEJIL, the Center for Justice and International, they pointed out that “this murder occurs in a context in which various human rights organizations have been documenting a sustained pattern of surveillance, threats, harassment, and acts of intimidation directed against Nicaraguan exiles in the region, especially in Costa Rica.”
The Tico Times reported that Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Agency is investigating whether a Nicaraguan government-sponsored hit squad is targeting exiles in the country, which has taken in 100,000 Nicaraguans since 2018.
Samcam was not the first to be killed in exile. Another refugee, campesino leader Jaime Luis Ortega, was murdered in October 2024 in the province of Alajuela, in a border area with Nicaragua. In 2022, opposition figure Rodolfo Rodas was found dead in Honduras; his relatives told digital outlet Confidencial that “men had been trying for months to convince him that they would help him move to the United States, where his son is.”
Opposition member Joao Maldonado and his wife were attacked on Costa Rican soil in 2024, following a previous assassination attempt in 2021. In an interview with Divergentes in late April, still recovering from 13 bullet wounds, Maldonado declared: “I blame the dictatorship.”
The murder of prominent exiles shows that escaping the country is not necessarily enough to escape the regime.
Deportation as political cover
Last, we turn to New York, where federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against the second of nine MS-13 gang leaders detained by Task Force Vulcan on terrorism indictments. On Monday, in a front-page story in El Faro English, Carlos García reported that the Trump administration is seeking to secretly dismiss charges and deport multiple top gang leaders to El Salvador.
Men who the U.S. government, through the inter-agency group known as Joint Task Force Vulcan, worked for years to arrest and indict. Now, Vulcan is tossing its own work, citing “geopolitical” and “national security” concerns and asking the court for secrecy. They say this is in order to avoid harming the government’s relationship with a foreign ally, the government of El Salvador.
“For Trump, Central America does not exist and is reduced to migration”
The first of the two gang leaders in question, Antonio López Larios, known by the alias “Greñas”, had charges against him suddenly dropped and was rendered in El Salvador in March. He was imprisoned in CECOT with dozens of Venezuelan migrants.
The second gang leader, Vladimir Antonio Arévalo Chávez, known by his alias “Vampiro”, is being held in a Brooklyn detention center as his attorneys argue that he must continue to face trial in the United States. They cite the dismantling of protections for a fair trial in El Salvador and widespread reports of torture in prison.
Most of all, Vampiro’s defense accuses the U.S. government of flouting due process to provide political cover for the Bukele administration in San Salvador, by deporting the men before they can testify in the Eastern District Court of New York.
We’re talking about heavily anticipated testimony: Among the DOJ’s accusations is the assertion that the Bukele administration negotiated with the gang for years for a reduction in homicides and electoral support.
Meanwhile, Joint Task Force Vulcan has been stripped of its original staff and had its mandate shifted. Created in 2019 to pursue MS-13, Trump’s own task force is a shadow of its former self.
Roman Gressier wrote today’s episode, with production and original soundtrack by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.