In November 2022, a man in El Salvador believed he had few options: be snatched off the street by police or testify against Massachusetts members of MS-13, the criminal organization responsible for countless murders and other violent crimes in the U.S. and Central America.
But both happened. After nine months in Salvadoran prisons, the man only known as John Doe in court documents came to the United States as a material witness for a racketeering case in exchange, as he understood it, for refuge in the U.S.
He’s now locked up in a facility here. A material witness often has testimony crucial to a case, and can be detained to protect them or prevent them from fleeing.
In the midst of the MS-13 case, the U.S. government revealed his identity in evidence and has been attempting to deport him.
In January, Doe filed a habeas corpus petition in Massachusetts federal court in his ongoing fight with the U.S. government to remain here as an asylum seeker.
Exposed as a snitch, Doe stated in the petition that he faces a death sentence if he returns.
Mneesha Gellman, an Emerson College professor and expert on El Salvador who provided details about the gang in the petition, backed up Doe’s claim.
She said if Doe returns, he “would be at particular risk of arbitrary detention and violence, including psychological or physical abuse, torture and death, by either state or gang actors due to his background as an FBI informant whose identity was disclosed to members of MS-13.”
That same month, an immigration judge ordered Doe not to be removed while his immigration case plays out.
A troubled, winding road to the witness stand
Based on his petition, the last two years of Doe’s life have been like a Hollywood crime thriller.
FBI agents protected him in a Salvadoran hotel for months. Then, just as he and an agent were to fly to the U.S. in March 2023, Salvadoran authorities snatched Doe from the airport and sent him to prison, where he claims he was tortured and starved for months. In December of that year, the Salvadoran government released Doe to the FBI. He has been in U.S. custody for 18 months.
Information about Doe remains limited; his initial petition is the only court filing obtained by WBUR with any information about him. But it does not include his name or other identifying details. It remains unclear if he has a criminal background, whether the government disputes any of his claims, and when or how he first got involved with MS-13 or law enforcement.
Last month, the trial he was supposed to testify in was canceled. Court records show attorneys for the two defendants knew federal prosecutors had an unnamed material witness ready to testify, giving the federal government a huge advantage in the case.
The defendants — Jose Vazquez and William Pineda Portillo — both pleaded guilty. Vazquez is already serving a 17-year federal prison sentence for a 2018 racketeering conviction. In his plea agreement, he admitted to killing a man in Chelsea in 2010 and could be sentenced to 25 additional years. Pineda Portillo faces at least 13 years behind bars for racketeering and in his plea agreement acknowledged that the U.S. government had evidence of his involvement in the murder.
WBUR requested an interview with Doe. His attorney said Doe declined.
Federal prosecutors in the criminal case and Doe’s attorneys, as well as representatives from the Department of Justice and the FBI, all declined to be interviewed for this story. WBUR independently verified the link between Doe and the Pineda Portillo case after reviewing pending federal cases against MS-13 members in Massachusetts and finding dates and actions from Doe’s petition that closely correspond.
An attempt to deport Doe started under former President Biden’s administration and continues under President Trump.
Trump has promised to take down leaders of MS-13. In both his first and current administration, Trump has directed substantial resources toward aggressively targeting transnational gangs, particularly MS-13 — prosecuting some members and kicking others out of the country. It’s also not the first time Trump’s administration has tried to deport a former MS-13 gang member who’d secretly helped police.
Trump also forged a strong relationship with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. Under an agreement, Trump has deported hundreds of Venezuelans he claims are associated with gangs to El Salvador where Bukele’s government is paid millions of dollars to imprison them.
MS-13 has been the largest, most powerful and violent gang in El Salvador for years. Originally established in Los Angeles to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the area, MS-13 grew and spread into other cities in the U.S. and other countries in Central America.
In an interview with WBUR, Gellman, the Emerson professor, said MS-13 in El Salvador has “operated like a shadow state, bringing horrific violence and exploitation to mostly working-class communities.”
In 2022, El Salvador faced a surge in gang violence that prompted Bukele to declare a state of exception. Bukele, who had campaigned as a political outsider promising to crack down on gangs, remained deeply popular at the time, despite reports that he’d been secretly negotiating with gang leaders. He’s drawn criticism from the U.S. — the Treasury Department has even imposed sanctions on senior Salvadoran officials for their dealings with gang leaders.
Bukele’s government has arrested and detained thousands of individuals, often on vague suspicions of gang affiliation. Critics have raised concerns that the crackdown has led to widespread human rights abuses and arbitrary arrests.
It’s against this backdrop that in November 2022 Doe received word from his neighbor that Salvadoran police had come around his home looking for him, according to his petition. Thinking he’d soon be arrested, Doe resolved to seek refuge with the FBI.
FBI agents held Doe under their protection at a hotel in San Salvador from December 2022 to March 2023. At that time, the FBI acknowledged that Doe’s life was in danger.
“I believe (Doe’s) safety is in significant jeopardy in El Salvador,” an agent wrote on March 24, 2023, in support of a material witness warrant — according to the petition that Doe filed.
“One of the core tenets of MS-13 is that any individual that is willing to testify against the organization should be killed. This risk is significantly heightened since (Doe) is in a position to testify against high-ranking leaders of MS-13, including Corredors of the East Coast Program. …agents have advised (Doe) that they will take steps necessary to ensure that he remains safe.”
The FBI planned to fly Doe out of the country a few days later. But while at the San Salvador airport with an FBI agent, Doe was arrested by Salvadoran police who charged him with “illicit association,” according to the petition.
The charge is defined in the Salvadoran penal code as when three or more people gather “with the purpose of committing a crime.”
Amnesty International reports the government charged most of the 84,000 people detained under the state of exception with “illicit association,” claiming they had ties to gangs.
Doe tried to explain during an interrogation that he was working with the FBI, his petition states. But they didn’t release him.
Over the next nine months, Salvadoran authorities shuffled him to three prisons where he was beaten, threatened, and deprived of food and water, according to his petition. In all, he said, he lost 42 pounds. Guards in El Salvador are notorious for assaulting, starving and abusing people confined.
The third jail, Izalco, Doe said had a “torture chamber.” Twice, Doe said, guards took him there.
“I had to remain on my knees the whole time — for around 2-3 hours. The guards hit me with a club on my legs, back, shoulder and ribs. They also kicked me and boxed my ears. I was bruised all over my body,” Doe claimed as part of his petition.
“I was terrified that I would either be killed by the guards or else they would tell the other inmates, all gang members, that I was working with the FBI.”
On Dec. 12, 2023, he had an unorthodox meeting with a judge, prosecutor and a man he’d never met who claimed to be his lawyer. Doe signed paperwork he believed would allow him to permanently live in the U.S. Doe did not have a chance to read the document himself, instead it was read aloud to him. Days later, Doe was released from prison into the custody of FBI agents, and he was transported to a jail in the U.S. to testify as a material witness in a criminal case against MS-13 members.
In his petition, Doe claimed he had no idea the U.S. would deport him back to El Salvador, especially since, according to Doe, an FBI agent had written in an affidavit for the warrant that anyone willing to testify against the gang is often targeted by MS-13 and killed.
Joshua Hanye, Doe’s attorney and a federal public defender, wrote in the petition: “Based on these conversations, Mr. Doe believed the plan was for him to go to the United States and never come back to El Salvador.”
Identity revealed and no guarantees
Doe states he expected to be detained for a few months until the criminal case concluded. But as the case dragged on, he allegedly was “forced to remain in solitary confinement in an effort to keep him safe from MS-13 members” for six months. He was transferred to a jail. WBUR is not identifying where Doe is being held for safety considerations.
In April 2024, he filed an application for asylum from jail with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Doe is in a precarious position.
“ It’s very hard for any informant — let alone an informant caught between the rock and the hard place of the criminal system and the immigration system — to stop the government from behaving in the way that it chooses.”
Alexandra Natapoff, Harvard Law School
It’s not uncommon for the government to backtrack on its promises to confidential informants, said Alexandra Natapoff, a Harvard Law School professor and expert on informants.
“ It’s very hard for any informant — let alone an informant caught between the rock and the hard place of the criminal system and the immigration system — to stop the government from behaving in the way that it chooses,” Natapoff said.
Unbeknownst to him, Doe’s identity as a material witness had been left exposed on the public docket in the criminal case for several months, according to the petition. He claims guards and other inmates in the U.S. told him that MS-13 members knew his identity and wanted him transferred to a regular cell, where they could access him.
An attorney for one of the two defendants in the criminal case saw his name, Doe alleges.
In late June 2024, Doe’s attorney requested a judge seal all references to Doe in the criminal case, which was later granted.
Within days, the U.S. government under the Biden administration filed a motion in the criminal case to have Doe released from custody so he could be returned to El Salvador. The federal government claims, according to the petition, that the State Department received diplomatic assurances of his safety from the Salvadoran government.
Gellman is skeptical of those assurances. She said he’s at risk of being tortured or killed by gang members or corrupt police.
Little has changed in El Salvador since Doe left, Gellman said. She’s interviewed residents who say that police and military now engage in many of the same illegal activities gang members were known for: extortion, sexual harassment and the kidnapping of young women.
“Police are violating the same human rights that the gangs were violating before,” Gellman said.
It’s unclear why the federal government wants Doe to return to El Salvador. On Jan. 6, an immigration judge paused Doe’s removal from the U.S. The case is still pending, but — because it is not public — the details are unavailable.
Natapoff said it’s rare for a judge to side with an informant.
“Judges are often loath to intervene either in prosecutorial discretion regarding informants, or in the immigration space,” she said.