On Wednesday, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is scheduled to visit El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, where a number of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members deported from the United States are being held. Part of the reason for Secretary Noem’s visit is also to meet with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to discuss ways to step up the number of gang-member deportation flights from the U.S. to El Salvador.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday will visit the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang have been held since their removal from the U.S.

Noem’s trip 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 Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while human rights activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses.

The gang members themselves, we might note, are also “rife with human rights abuses,” in addition to having been caught in the United States illegally, and many of them have criminal charges and convictions in the United States and their countries of origin.

In a post on X Wednesday, Homeland Security indicated it would continue working with El Salvador, saying that Noem was slated to discuss how the U.S. can “increase the number of deportation flights and removals of violent criminals from the U.S.” during her visit with President Nayib Bukele.

Since taking office, Noem has frequently been front and center in efforts to highlight the immigration crackdown. She took part in immigration enforcement operations, rode horses with Border Patrol agents and was the face of a television campaign warning people in the country illegally to self-deport.

All of this is, of course, part of the Trump administration’s overall program to reduce not only the influx of illegal immigrants across both borders but to expel people currently in the country illegally, including the worst, first. Tren de Aragua and MS-13 members are definitely among the worst.