‘El Greñas,’ the MS-13 leader who may hold the key to Bukele and Trump’s prison deal

Every day, more details emerge about the prison agreement between Nayib Bukele and Donald Trump to receive migrants deported from the United States. On Monday, the day after the Salvadoran president televised the transfer of 261 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 criminal organizations to the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT), the White House clarified that, in reality, 101 of the Venezuelans who arrived on Sunday were simply undocumented migrants, not terrorists. By then, the controversy had already erupted. On the same day that the U.S. sent two flights full of Venezuelan deportees using an 18th-century law designed for times of war and without following due process, a judge temporarily blocked the measure.

Later, The New York Times revealed that — although Washington claimed the planes were already flying over international waters when a judge ordered the operation suspended — at least one of them had not yet taken off. Bukele has cited financial reasons for renting out his mega-prison; the Salvadoran president estimates it could generate an annual income of $6 million, which will help maintain a prison system that costs $200 million a year. But money doesn’t seem to be all he’s interested in.

One of the deported MS-13 gang members featured in the video released by Bukele is César Humberto López Larios, alias “Greñas de Stoners,” one of the top leaders of the organization and a founding member of the Ranfla Nacional, the high command of the criminal structure that negotiated homicide reductions in exchange for prison benefits with several Salvadoran governments, including Bukele’s. López Larios was captured on June 9, 2024, in Mexico, after years on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Greñas was also one of 27 leaders accused by the United States of narcoterrorism and was expected to testify in a New York court about his dealings with the Salvadoran government. Four days before Greñas’ deportation, on March 11, the prosecutor’s office requested that the charges against him be dismissed. “Due to geopolitical and national security reasons, and the sovereign authority of the Executive Branch in international affairs, the United States dismisses the charges against the defendant without prejudice, so that El Salvador may first prosecute him on criminal charges under Salvadoran law,” reads a prosecutor’s document obtained by El Faro.

This, according to some experts, could be interpreted as a message to the gang leaders detained by U.S. authorities: if they speak out, they could end up in Bukele’s hands. For his part, the Salvadoran president is seeking to curry favor with Trump in every way possible to achieve his goals. And he seems to be succeeding.

Two days after Greñas’ deportation was announced, two of the top MS-13 leaders detained in the U.S. and who had participated in negotiations with the Bukele administration pleaded guilty before the Eastern District Court of New York, according to documents obtained by Insight Crime journalist Carlos García. Their names are Marlon Antonio Menjívar Portillo, alias “Rojo de Park View,” and Jorge Alexander de la Cruz, alias “Cruger.”

The criminal career of ‘El Greñas’

López Larios was born in 1978 in western El Salvador. He founded the first cells of the Mara Salvatrucha gang in the 1990s. He has a long criminal record. He has been accused of homicide, extortion, and membership in terrorist organizations. He was convicted and released several times between 2002 and 2013. In the following years, he was sent by MS-13 to carry out operations in Mexico and the United States.

A 2016 investigation by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office and police called Operation Jaque, a copy of which EL PAÍS has in its possession, reveals a series of phone calls in which gang leaders coordinate arms and drug trafficking from Mexico to El Salvador. In the conversations, the leaders identify Greñas as “the person in charge” of drug trafficking as part of the Mexico Program, the MS-13 branch in that country.

In 2017, Greñas was captured in the United States and deported to El Salvador. There, he was held in a maximum-security prison accused of a dozen crimes, including ordering the murder of police officers. But in October 2020, a second-instance court ordered his release, arguing that he had exceeded his prison term without a final conviction. By then, Bukele had been president for more than a year.

On June 9, 2024, López Larios was captured in the city of Arriaga, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. He was later transferred to the United States, where he was detained by FBI agents.

The case that has Bukele nervous

Negotiations between the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs with the Bukele administration have been revealed by journalistic investigations, but one of the formal accusations filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2022 directly points to two senior Bukele officials negotiating with MS-13 to reduce homicides between 2019 and 2021.

Between 2020 and 2022, the United States repeatedly requested that El Salvador extradite the leaders it held in its prisons. The Bukele administration refused, creating diplomatic tension between the two nations. For its part, the FBI redoubled efforts to capture those at large and captured at least half a dozen, including Greñas.

Another of the Mara Salvatrucha leaders arrested in Mexico and sent to the United States was Elmer Canales, alias “Crook,” who was captured on November 8, 2023, in Mexican territory, when he was supposed to be serving a sentence in El Salvador’s maximum-security prison. In January 2024, an investigation by El Faro revealed that the Bukele government was so desperate to recover the gang kingpin it had previously illegally released that it offered, through intermediaries, $1 million to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in exchange for its help in recovering Crook.

Despite all the efforts made by the United States to capture MS-13 leaders, the Trump administration appears to be changing its mind. Or at least with one of them. The agreement between Bukele and Trump to receive deportees at the CECOT came to light on February 3, following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Central American country. That same day, El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States, Milena Mayorga, said in a television interview that the deportation of MS-13 leaders held by the United States was “a matter of honor.” “That was the only thing President Bukele told him [Trump]: ‘We want them deported,’” Mayorga said.

After receiving El Greñas among the deportees last Saturday, Bukele wrote on his X account: “One of them is a member of the criminal organization’s highest structure. This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors.”

Deportations from the United States to El Salvador’s CECOT have been halted by a federal judge, who has given the Trump administration until next Monday to prove it did not disobey a court order. This also calls into question whether the agreement will continue to work, and whether more MS-13 gang members held in the United States could be placed in Bukele’s hands.

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