Costa Rica deports 14 Salvadorans suspected of gang membership

Fourteen Salvadorans suspected of being involved in gangs in their country were deported last week from Costa Rica, where they had been detained at a migrant apprehension center, the Immigration Administration reported.

“The Salvadorans, all of a high criminal profile and alleged members of Salvadoran criminal organizations, known as maras and gangs, had been (detained) since the first months of 2020,” the Immigration Administration said in a statement.

It explained that the closing of land borders between Central American countries prevented the migrants from being deported previously, in addition to the fact that some of them tested positive for COVID-19.

Costa Rica’s Immigration Administration resumed coordination with the Salvadoran authorities to carry out the deportations once sanitary orders were lifted in the detention center.

“They were months of arduous work, not only in the health care of these people, but in the conversations we had with the government of El Salvador to carry out the deportations,” said Stephen Madden, commissioner of Costa Rican immigration police.

According to the Immigration Administration, the Salvadorans profile as “belonging to criminal organizations such as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Barrio 18 gang,” which commit “crimes of homicide, deprivation of liberty, and other crimes in their country.”

Per the Immigration Administration, some of the deported are fugitives from justice in El Salvador.