‘A SUCCESSFUL COUNTERTERRORISM MISSION’: The first word of the weekend operation came in a cryptic, early afternoon statement released by the Pentagon and attributed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
“The Department of Defense completed a successful counterterrorism mission this weekend in partnership with El Salvador. We commend the actions of our military personnel to degrade Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the leadership of President Trump.”
The statement had Pentagon reporters scrambling for details. Was there some sort of commando raid targeting one of the newly designated drug cartels or criminal gangs, wondered Reuters National Security Correspondent Idrees Ali.
He quickly discovered the mission was more of a rendition of another group of accused Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador’s now-infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, “CECOT,” a notorious super-max prison designed to hold 40,000 prisoners in large, spartan group cells. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen the words “counter-terrorism mission” be used to describe deportation flights of alleged criminals,” Ali posted on X.
RUBIO: ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT BUKELE’: A statement from the State Department also portrayed the law enforcement action as a military operation.
“Last night, in a successful counterterrorism operation with our allies in El Salvador, the United States military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in the statement which was also posted on X. “In order to keep the American people safe, President Trump designated the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. These criminals will no longer terrorize our communities and citizens.”
The White House insisted the deportations were conducted under existing federal immigration law, not the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which a federal judge has blocked the administration from using over questions about whether the accused, some of whom have not been convicted of any crime, were allegedly denied due process.
“Once again, we extend our gratitude to President [Nayib] Bukele and the government of El Salvador for their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”
TRUMP: I WAS ELECTED TO GET ‘BAD PEOPLE OUT OF OUR COUNTRY … THAT’S WHAT I DID’: President Donald Trump shared another highly produced video on his Truth Social platform showing a U.S. Air Force C-17 arriving at night in El Salvador with the shackled prisoners being escorted off the plane to a dramatic music soundtrack.
“Thank you President Bukele, of El Salvador, for taking the criminals that were so stupidly allowed, by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, to enter our Country, and giving them such a wonderful place to live!” Trump posted.
“All individuals are confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists,” Bukele posted on X. “This operation is another step in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.”
“These are killers, these are drug lords, these are really bad people, but I want to thank the President of El Salvador, because he’s done an amazing job,” Trump said during his nearly daily executive order signing session. “I got elected on the basis of getting bad people out of our country that shouldn’t be here, very dangerous people out of our country, and that’s what I did.”
“And then, you have a judge that wants to take over. I can’t imagine it can be allowed. If it was up to him, they’d all be put back in our country,” Trump added, as the legal fight over his deportation authority now rests in an appeals court.
TRUMP DHS SUED FOR REQUIRING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO REGISTER WITH GOVERNMENT
Good Tuesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Christopher Tremoglie. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow me on Threads and/or on X @jamiejmcintyre.
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HAPPENING TODAY: ‘RAZIN’ CAINE FACES SENATE SCRUTINY: This morning retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John Daniel Caine, nominated by President Trump to replace fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles C.Q. Brown, appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer questions about why he, who has never overseen a branch of the armed forces, led a major combatant command, or commanded a division of troops in combat, should be elevated to the most senior uniformed officer in the U.S. military.
Caine, who like Brown, was an F-16 pilot, needs a waiver from Trump to serve in the job as the president’s senior military adviser because he doesn’t meet the statutory requirements for the position. But Trump picked him, according to his own account, because of Caine’s can-do attitude when the two met in Iraq in 2018.
Trump loved his call sign, “Razin,” which he initially thought was “Raisin,” and along with Caine’s gung ho assessment that ISIS in Iraq could be defeated in weeks if only the military was unleashed to use all means at its disposal.
My colleague Mike Brest has written an excellent preview of the questions Caine will likely face this morning:
READ MORE: DAN CAINE JOINT CHIEFS HEARING: FIVE THINGS GENERAL MAY NEED TO ADDRESS
SIGNALGATE: ‘CASE CLOSED’: President Donald Trump has made it clear he’s done with the hand-wringing over the fact that his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, accidentally invited a journalist to a highly sensitive group chat over strikes in Yemen and that his defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared obviously classified details on the unsecured, unauthorized messaging app Signal.
“As the President has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his National Security team. And this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday.
In a video on X, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell dismissed the controversy as “hoaxes and lies” and slammed “out-of-tough D.C. beltway journalists” for spending their week “focused on anonymously sourced sensationalized stories.”
“They have one playbook, which is when they get caught on something they deny and they attack,” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, and the journalist in the chat, responded on CNN. “Sometimes it works, either because the person they’re attacking is bullied or intimidated, but were not bullied or intimidated, and it doesn’t work when the goods are just there, visible for everybody to see.”
“They can say that … it’s fake news.” Goldberg said. “But it’s actually real. His own White House acknowledged that it was real. This is a thing that happened on Signal.”
As the White House is trying to move beyond the story, the Wall Street Journal does cite anonymous sources as saying Waltz’s stock is falling in the wake of the scandal. “For Trump, the officials said, Waltz’s biggest sin wasn’t starting a Signal chat to coordinate strikes on the Houthis in Yemen or even posting Israel-provided intelligence onto an unclassified network. It was having the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number in his phone and inadvertently adding him to the conversation,” the report said.
The report also cited two officials saying that Waltz “created and hosted multiple other sensitive national-security conversations on Signal” but that Trump has decided to give him a pass because “he didn’t want the media and Democrats to claim a scalp so early in his second administration.
“They’ve done nothing to show that this will not happen again. This is a gross violation of the law,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) on CNN last night. “It put American pilots in danger. It literally opened up where they will be and when over enemy targets, so that those enemies might have shot them down. And the Secretary of Defense needs to make it clear how this will not happen again, because he expects everyone under his command to follow the laws that he grossly violated.”
OPINION: HEGSETH NEEDS TO CLEAN UP HIS SLOPPY OPERATION
THE RUNDOWN:
Washington Examiner: Dan Caine Joint Chiefs hearing: Five things general may need to address
Washington Examiner: Bodies of three US soldiers recovered in Lithuania
Washington Examiner: Kremlin warns Ukraine peace will be ‘time-consuming’ but Putin ‘open’ to Trump talks
Washington Examiner: Is Trump finally waking up to Putin’s manipulation game?
Washington Examiner: Israel orders mass evacuations in ‘maximum pressure’ Gaza campaign
Washington Examiner: Trump DHS sued for requiring illegal immigrants to register with government
Washington Examiner: Texas asks Trump administration to seize control of border islands infiltrated by cartels
Washington Examiner: Trump’s handling of immigration outperforms trade and economy: Poll
Washington Examiner: Pete Hegseth promises equal combat standards for men and women
Washington Examiner: What to know about the students being detained by ICE over anti-Israel activism
Washington Examiner: Netanyahu advisers arrested in Qatar corruption investigation
Washington Examiner: ‘Bizarre’ pro-Qatar questioning from Republican senator matches talking points given to him by Qatari foreign agents
Washington Examiner: Opinion: Hegseth needs to clean up his sloppy operation
Wall Street Journal: Mike Waltz Is Losing Support Inside the White House
AP: Hegseth orders fitness standards to be gender neutral for combat jobs. Many already are
AP: Chinese military launches large-scale drills around Taiwan
Breaking Defense: During Indo-Pacific Tour Hegseth Rallies Japan and Philippines, Pledges ‘Shift,’ Cooperation
AP: Ukraine hasn’t held elections since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Here’s why
AP: Israel Strikes Southern Beirut Overnight, Saying It Targeted a Hezbollah Official
The Atlantic: An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Former Air Force Secretary Didn’t Include NGAD in His 2026 Budget Plan
Breaking Defense: Embraer Ready to Step Up KC-390 Tanker Investment for US, Pending NGAS Decision
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Former STRATCOM Bosses: US Must Recommit to Nuclear Deterrent to Combat Russia, China
Newsweek: Photo Shows Taiwan’s New F-16 Jet to Counter China Threat
Air & Space Forces Magazine: More A-10s Deploy to Middle East, This Time from Idaho
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Civilian Cyber Vulnerabilities Threaten Pacific Deployment Plans: Report
The Post and Courier: Inside a Marine’s Decision to Eject from a Failing F-35B Fighter Jet and the Betrayal in Its Wake
SpaceNews: Space Force to Test Satellite Refueling Technologies in Orbit
Defense News: New Defense Department Experimentation Series Targets Data Integration
