The Washington Post reports that in exchange for access to El Salvadoran prisons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed to turn over nine MS-13 gang informants to the El Salvadoran government, thereby breaking the U.S. government’s promises to those cooperators. Story here: “Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal.” The quid pro quo is an unusually public and high-profile example of how the government can and routinely does break its promises to informants, exposing cooperators to deportation, retribution and even death. Recent examples can be found here and here, but the problem is an old and endemic one.
Another notable feature of this particular case is the scrutiny and procedural protections that have kicked in as a result of the Justice Department’s efforts to dismiss the cases against the informants. The presiding judge, Judge Joan Azrack, refused to seal the motion to dismiss charges against Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, writing that:
“The public has a right under the First Amendment to know about this motion unless the government has identified an overriding compelling interest that warrants sealing. . . . In this case, the Government appears to be making inconsistent representations and the public has a right to know about this motion before its resolution.”
Most informant deals are less formal and more secretive than this one, and therefore trigger little or no scrutiny when they are breached. Which means we never learn about them at all.