Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has signed into law constitutional reforms to permit life prison sentences for people as young as 12.
Salvadoran nationals deported from the United States are arbitrarily detained in El Salvador and their loved ones do not know where they are or how to contact them.
Far-right leader José Antonio Kast has been sworn in as Chile’s president in the nation’s most pronounced rightward shift since the return of democracy in 1990.
President Gustavo Petro’s political party has emerged victorious in Colombia’s congressional election, but will have to build coalitions with other parties to advance its agenda.
Guatemalan police and soldiers are using new powers under a state of emergency to target the Barrio 18 gang in a high-crime area in the capital.
Latin American progressive leaders are increasingly being backed into a corner on organized crime by pressure from the Trump administration and their own voters, who point to the results from El Salvador's war on gangs.
The U.S. capture and ouster of Venezuelan strongman leader Nicolás Maduro marked a stunning culmination of the Trump administration’s efforts to assert dominance in Latin America.
Chile has become the latest country in Latin America to veer toward the right, electing a deeply conservative veteran politician who has long attracted comparisons to Donald Trump.
Chile is heading into a high-stakes presidential runoff defined by sharply contrasting visions of the country’s recent past and visions for its future.
Chileans face perhaps the starkest choice in the history of their country’s young democracy when they vote next month in a presidential runoff between hard-right José Antonio Kast and communist Jeannette Jara.
A federal judge has concluded that the Department of Justice’s prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on human smuggling charges could amount to illegal retaliation.
The Trump administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he declined a plea deal involving deportation to Costa Rica.
Early results in Bolivia's presidential election show the country headed for an unprecedented runoff following a vote in which a dark horse centrist, Sen. Rodrigo Paz, drew more votes than the right-wing front-runners, although not enough to secure an outright victory.
Bolivians have headed to the polls for a pivotal election that could end the long reign of the leftist Movement Toward Socialism party.
The party of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has approved constitutional changes to allow indefinite presidential reelection and extend terms to six years.
Venezuela's attorney general has launched an investigation into El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele for alleged mistreatment of Venezuelan migrants.
Venezuela has released 10 jailed U.S. citizens and permanent residents in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
A federal judge in Maryland has scolded the Trump administration for its “utter refusal” to detail deportation plans for Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The Trump administration hasn’t decided where it would deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia if he is freed from a Tennessee jail.
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a federal judge in Maryland to impose fines and other sanctions against the Trump administration.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is intensifying his crackdown on dissent, a move observers suggest has been emboldened by his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been charged by the Trump administration with transporting people who were in the country illegally.
A coalition of immigrant rights groups is suing to invalidate the Trump administration's deal to house detainees in a notorious prison in El Salvador.
El Salvador’s arrest of an anticorruption lawyer from a well-known human rights organization last month is the latest example of how the special powers given to President Nayib Bukele to battle gangs are being applied to a host of unrelated alleged crimes.
Human rights organizations, politicians and experts have sharply criticized a law approved by El Salvador’s Congress this week that seeks to limit foreign influence and corruption.
A former U.S. Army and CIA officer has formally presented his credentials to Mexico’s president as the new United States ambassador to that country at a moment of increased U.S. pressure to fight the drug cartels and delicate trade negotiations.
Albania’s main opposition leader has hired Trump-linked campaign consultants and a lobbying firm to help him in the country's May 11 parliamentary election.
A meeting between the leaders of Canada and the United States is not usually considered a high-stakes showdown.
President Donald Trump says “I could” bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador if he wanted.
Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign of immigration enforcement that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him.
Four House Democrats are visiting El Salvador in a bid to support Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man whom the Trump administration deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government has kept imprisoned for who he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela.
Chris Van Hollen has emerged, for now, as a leading figure in the resistance to President Donald Trump.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported, told him he has been moved from the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT to a detention center with better conditions.
A federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration appears to have willfully violated his order to turn around planes of migrants headed for El Salvador increases the prospect of officials being held in criminal contempt of court and potentially facing possible prosecution.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has met in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
A federal judge says he's found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court and could seek officials’ prosecution for violating his orders last month to turn around planes carrying deportees to an El Salvador prison.
The White House has put forward a new media policy that sharply curtails access to Donald Trump by the news agencies that serve media outlets around the world.
A federal judge says she will order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her orders to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
A federal judge in Maryland will order sworn testimony by Trump officials to determine if they complied with her orders to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison.
The Trump administration has turned a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press away from covering an Oval Office news conference involving President Donald Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele.
President Donald Trump’s top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they had no basis for the small Central American nation to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.
President Donald Trump’s top advisers and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele say that they have no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.
President Donald Trump has invoked a rarely used 1798 law that gives a president immense powers to arrest and deport noncitizens in a time of war.
President Donald Trump has invoked a rarely used 1798 law that gives a president immense powers to arrest and deport noncitizens in a time of war.
Costa Rica’s security minister has begun a visit to El Salvador to study the measures it has taken to reduce violence caused by its powerful street gangs.
The Trump administration says it has deported 17 more “violent criminals” from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs to El Salvador, as it doubles down on a policy of removing people from the U.S. to third countries despite criticism over lack of transparency and human rights protections.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has visited Colombia as part of a tour of three Latin American nations to discuss deportation, immigration and crime.
The Trump administration is invoking a powerful tool in seeking to cut off a judge’s inquiry into whether it defied his order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants being deported from the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang have been held since their removal from the U_S_ Noem’s trip Wednesday to the prison where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.”.
The U.S. government used an 18th-century wartime law to deport nearly 300 Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, where they were immediately transferred to the country’s maximum-security gang prison.
Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government have filed a legal action in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States.
The Justice Department is resisting a federal judge’s demand for more information about flights that took deportees to El Salvador.
President Donald Trump’s invocation of an 18th-century wartime law to deport hundreds of immigrants, most of them Venezuelans, to a prison in El Salvador has led to a showdown with the judiciary.
A federal judge on Monday was incredulous at the contention by the Trump administration that his directive to turn around deportation flights wasn't binding because it was made verbally.
The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy is a mega-prison where visitation, recreation and education are not allowed.
The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members.
President Donald Trump’s supporters are echoing some of the rhetoric and actions that elsewhere have preceded attacks on the judiciary as the courts deliver a series of setbacks to his dramatic attempt to change the federal government without congressional approval.
The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to use a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport Venezuelan migrants it accuses of being gang members, ending the temporary halt on deportations ordered by a federal district judge.
Voters in Honduras will select candidates from the three main parties to compete in November’s general election for the presidency.
Billionaire Elon Musk has created a buzz waving a chainsaw in the air at a conservative gathering outside Washington.
The United States government is formally designating eight Latin American organized crime groups that also operate in the U_S_ to be “foreign terrorist organizations.”.
The Associated Press' U.S. immigration news editor, Elliot Spagat, was joined by Rebecca Santana, who covers the Department of Homeland Security, and Christopher Sherman, who is the news director for Mexico and Central America, to talk about their coverage during an Ask-Me-Anything conversation on Reddit.
President Donald Trump’s administration is using federal prisons to detain some people arrested in its immigration crackdown.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have hoped to spend his first trip abroad focused exclusively on issues close to his heart: immigration, counternarcotics and curbing Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo says his country will accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States.
El Salvador has offered to take in people deported from the U.S. for entering the country illegally as well as the country’s violent criminals — even if they’re American citizens.
The Trump administration and the president of El Salvador said they struck a deal allowing the U.S. to ship detained migrants and imprisoned criminals to a mega-prison there.
President Donald Trump says he is exploring whether he can send American criminals jailed in the “most severe cases” to be incarcerated in other countries.
President Donald Trump says he wants the U.S. to take ownership of the Gaza Strip and redevelop it after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has left El Salvador with an agreement from that country’s president to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, including violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.
Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes, who spent the final years of his life in Nicaragua to avoid various criminal sentences, died late Tuesday.
The Department of Homeland Security says about 600,000 Venezuelans and more than 200,000 El Salvadorans already living in the United States can legally remain another 18 months.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is triumphant about his big bet on bitcoin as the cryptocurrency reached historic highs, surpassing $100,000 for the first time.
More than 2,000 soldiers and 500 police officers surrounded a dense neighborhood on the outskirts of El Salvador’s capital in an effort to quash the remnants of gangs the president said were trying to set up shop in the area.
Up to 3,000 Salvadoran Catholics will participate in Saint Óscar Romero's pilgrimage, an annual event that kicks off in El Salvador each Aug. 1 to honor San Salvador’s archbishop, who was appointed saint by pope Francis in 2018.
A rights report says the government of El Salvador has arrested 3,319 underage suspects and sentenced 579 during the harsh 2 1/2 year-old crackdown on street gangs.
The human rights organization Cristosal says at least 261 people have died in prisons in El Salvador during President Nayib Bukele’s 2 1/2-year-old crackdown on street gangs.
The Biden administration has sent a high-level delegation to El Salvador to attend President Nayib Bukele's inauguration to a second term.
Ecuador’s fledgling president has won a resounding victory in a referendum that he touted as a way to crack down on criminal gangs behind a spiraling wave of violence.
While world leaders have expressed shock over Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s decision to raid Mexico’s embassy, the unusual move — and Noboa’s relative silence about it — is unlikely to hurt him with constituents.
El Salvador’s lawmakers have granted a request by President Nayib Bukele for the 24th consecutive one-month extension of an anti-gang emergency decree.
Former President Donald Trump has met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a conservative populist whose crackdowns in Hungary have sparked criticism that he's eroding that country's democracy.
In this U.S. election year, the Republican Party is aligning with some Latin American populists.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has received a rock-star welcome at a conservative gathering outside Washington as he urged people to “unapologetically fight” against what he called “dark forces.”.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and his New Ideas party have won the supermajority the leader needs in Congress to govern as he pleases.
As El Salvador’s electoral body begins a vote-by-vote count of the country’s elections last week, the political opposition warned they could ask to nullify results of the legislative elections due to irregularities.
El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator” or as his X profile read on election day, the “Philosopher King.”.
Salvadorans are packing the capital’s central square to celebrate the expected reelection of Nayib Bukele as president even before any official results from Sunday's election have been announced.
