US military completes ‘counter-terrorism mission’ with El Salvador

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military has completed a “successful counter-terrorism mission” in partnership with El Salvador, a senior Pentagon official said on Monday, though the term appeared to refer to the deportation of alleged criminals.

Earlier on Monday, the State Department said that a group of alleged Venezuelan and MS-13 gang members was transported to El Salvador by the U.S. military on Sunday night.

The term “counter-terrorism” has traditionally been used in the Pentagon to classify operations that target militants in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

The Pentagon did not specify what kind of “counter-terrorism” operation it had carried out in its brief statement.

“The Department of Defense completed a successful counter-terrorism mission this weekend, in partnership with El Salvador,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, said in a statement.

The State Department in its separate statement on Monday said that 17 people who it says were foreign criminals were deported over the weekend.

The group of alleged violent criminals tied to Tren de Aragua and MS-13 was transported by the U.S. military on Sunday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, adding that the deportees included murderers and rapists.

Trump, a Republican, took office in January vowing to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally as part of a wide-ranging immigration crackdown. Earlier this month, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that historically has been used only in wartime, to target alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)