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Investigating Bukele and Trump’s Controversial CECOT Deal | FRONTLINE (PBS) + @elfaro

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Investigating Bukele and Trump’s Controversial CECOT Deal | FRONTLINE (PBS) + @elfaro

Uploaded: 2026-04-07

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Three months after President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 and began his major immigration crackdown, he held a White House sit-down with a popular Latin American leader who had once called himself the world’s coolest dictator. Watch the opening scene of “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador,” a new documentary from FRONTLINE and El Faro. This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Donate to FRONTLINE now: https://bit.ly/47DFzCb And support your local PBS station here: https://www.pbs.org/donate As the documentary explores, Bukele opened the doors of the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT to planeloads of mostly Venezuelan U.S. deportees that the Trump administration had swept up and accused of being gang members. Later reporting would reveal that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. or proven gang affiliations. “It was pretty obvious what Trump was getting out of this deal,” T. Christian Miller of ProPublica says in the opening scene. “It was much less obvious what Bukele was doing.” That lack of transparency was familiar to Carlos Martínez and Óscar Martínez, reporters at the El Salvador investigative news outlet El Faro who have covered Bukele and his administration for years. “The nature of Bukele’s government is to keep things secret,” Carlos says in the opening scene. FRONTLINE and El Faro’s documentary, releasing April 7, pierces that veil to investigate what underpinned Bukele’s controversial CECOT deal with the Trump administration. The film chronicles how the brothers and their colleagues discovered evidence that ran counter to Bukele’s tough-on-gangs image: Bukele’s government had previously negotiated with MS-13 and other violent gangs it publicly claimed to be cracking down on, El Faro found. Those negotiations, documents showed, involved offering privileges to gang leaders in prison, in exchange for a reduction in homicides and voter support in territories the gangs controlled. Following the revelations, Bukele, who had vowed to end government corruption and crush gangs, claimed “El Faro lied” and said the documents showing his administration’s dealings with gang leaders were “fake.” The Martínez brothers now live — and report — in exile. Through the brothers’ story, as well as the perspectives of other reporters, former U.S. officials and insiders, “The Deal” shines new light on Bukele’s tangled history with the gangs the U.S. is fighting. The documentary examines why Bukele offered to imprison U.S. deportees in CECOT — and why, in exchange, he asked for a number of gang leaders in U.S. custody to be returned to El Salvador, in what one reporter in the documentary calls “a deal within a deal.” Bukele has said the Trump administration's return of MS-13 members will help El Salvador "finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants" of the gang. But some observers suspect he had another motive: preventing gang leaders in U.S. custody from exposing the details of their past dealings with Bukele’s administration. For the full story, watch “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador.” Explore additional reporting on “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador” on our website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-deal-trump-bukele-gangs-el-salvador/ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PBSfrontline Sign up for our newsletter: https://frontline.org/newsletter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontlinepbs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frontline Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/frontlinepbs.bsky.social FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and airs nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with major support from Ford Foundation, and The Fialkow Family Foundation, as part of the Plum Bush Foundation. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Trust, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and Corey David Sauer, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. Support for “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador” is provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.

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Source: PBS Frontline

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description: Three months after President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 and began his major immigration crackdown, he held a White House sit-down with a popular Latin American leader who had once called himself the world’s coolest dictator. Watch the opening scene of “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador,” a new documentary from FRONTLINE and El Faro. This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Donate to FRONTLINE now: https://bit.ly/47DFzCb And support your local PBS station here: https://www.pbs.org/donate As the documentary explores, Bukele opened the doors of the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT to planeloads of mostly Venezuelan U.S. deportees that the Trump administration had swept up and accused of being gang members. Later reporting would reveal that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. or proven gang affiliations. “It was pretty obvious what Trump was getting out of this deal,” T. Christian Miller of ProPublica says in the opening scene. “It was much less obvious what Bukele was doing.” That lack of transparency was familiar to Carlos Martínez and Óscar Martínez, reporters at the El Salvador investigative news outlet El Faro who have covered Bukele and his administration for years. “The nature of Bukele’s government is to keep things secret,” Carlos says in the opening scene. FRONTLINE and El Faro’s documentary, releasing April 7, pierces that veil to investigate what underpinned Bukele’s controversial CECOT deal with the Trump administration. The film chronicles how the brothers and their colleagues discovered evidence that ran counter to Bukele’s tough-on-gangs image: Bukele’s government had previously negotiated with MS-13 and other violent gangs it publicly claimed to be cracking down on, El Faro found. Those negotiations, documents showed, involved offering privileges to gang leaders in prison, in exchange for a reduction in homicides and voter support in territories the gangs controlled. Following the revelations, Bukele, who had vowed to end government corruption and crush gangs, claimed “El Faro lied” and said the documents showing his administration’s dealings with gang leaders were “fake.” The Martínez brothers now live — and report — in exile. Through the brothers’ story, as well as the perspectives of other reporters, former U.S. officials and insiders, “The Deal” shines new light on Bukele’s tangled history with the gangs the U.S. is fighting. The documentary examines why Bukele offered to imprison U.S. deportees in CECOT — and why, in exchange, he asked for a number of gang leaders in U.S. custody to be returned to El Salvador, in what one reporter in the documentary calls “a deal within a deal.” Bukele has said the Trump administration's return of MS-13 members will help El Salvador "finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants" of the gang. But some observers suspect he had another motive: preventing gang leaders in U.S. custody from exposing the details of their past dealings with Bukele’s administration. For the full story, watch “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador.” Explore additional reporting on “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador” on our website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-deal-trump-bukele-gangs-el-salvador/ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PBSfrontline Sign up for our newsletter: https://frontline.org/newsletter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontlinepbs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frontline Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/frontlinepbs.bsky.social FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and airs nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with major support from Ford Foundation, and The Fialkow Family Foundation, as part of the Plum Bush Foundation. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Trust, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and Corey David Sauer, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. Support for “The Deal: Trump, Bukele & the Gangs of El Salvador” is provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.
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Investigating Bukele and Trump’s Controversial CECOT Deal | FRONTLINE (PBS) + @elfaro

Raw Attributes