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.

President-elect Donald Trump calls his Mar-a-Lago resort the "center of the universe.”.

More world leaders are confirming they have been invited to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

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 president of Honduras has announced the creation of a new 20,000-capacity “megaprison.”.

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.”.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is savoring what appears to be a landslide presidential reelection victory.

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.

To many, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is a national hero who took on the country’s violent gangs with an unrelenting hand.

Félix Ulloa, temporarily on leave as El Salvador’s vice president while he runs for reelection alongside Nayib Bukele, has denied accusations that their administration has made undemocratic moves to consolidate power.

More than 50 countries that together have half the world’s population are expecting national elections in 2024.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele has taken his presidential reelection campaign beyond the tiny Central American country’s borders to capitalize on his rising profile across Latin America.

Thousands of detainees swept up in El Salvador's gang crackdown over the past 1 1/2 years have been released from pre-trial detention.

Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, has won the Miss Universe competition in El Salvador, the first to wear the crown from her country.

The Miss Universe competition hosted by El Salvador is the latest spectacle touted by President Nayib Bukele in his efforts to change the reputation of his historically violence-torn nation.

El Salvador’s government has begun slapping a $1,130 fee on travelers from dozens of countries connecting through the nation’s main airport.

With tattoo-covered faces, wearing white shirts and shorts, gang members captured during El Salvador’s state of exception are gradually filling the country’s new mega prison.

The State Department says it's imposing sanctions on two former Salvadoran presidents and dozens of other officials and judges in Central America.

Honduras plans to build the only island prison colony in the Western Hemisphere and send its most-feared gangsters there.

Central America is experiencing a wave of unrest that is remarkable even for a region whose history is riddled with turbulence.

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has been nominated by his New Ideas party to run for reelection in next year’s contest.

Honduras has started an El Salvador-style mass sweep of prisons and arrested a suspect in a pool-hall shooting last week that killed 11 people.

El Salvador's president has registered for reelection in next February’s contest even though legal experts and opposition figures say the country’s constitution prohibits it.

Authorities in Honduras are beginning to hand over to relatives the hacked, burned corpses of 46 women killed in the worst riot at a women’s prison in recent memory.

Over the past 15 months, El Salvador’s security forces have jailed tens of thousands of people in a massive crackdown on the country’s notorious gangs.

Officials and witnesses say that fans angry at being blocked from entering a Salvadoran soccer league match knocked down an entrance gate to the stadium, leading to a crush that killed 12 people and injured dozens.

Transgender people in El Salvador face violence and discrimination in their deeply religious country.

The Central American nation of El Salvador has finished a full year under anti-gang emergency measures that were originally supposed to last only a month.

El Salvador’s congress has voted to approve yet another extension of state-of-emergency allowing police to round up suspected members of street gangs.

El Salvador's government has sent 2,000 more suspects to a new prison built especially for gang members, and the justice minister vows that “they will never return” to the streets.

When El Salvador began making mass arrests of people with suspected gang affiliations last year, President Nayib Bukele ordered the construction of what would be the largest prison in Latin America.

Nine months into a state of emergency declared by President Nayib Bukele to fight street gangs, El Salvador has seen more than 1,000 documented human rights abuses and about 90 deaths of prisoners in custody.

Honduras has become the second country in Central America to impose a state of exception suspending some constitutional rights to deal with street gangs.

El Salvador’s government has taken its efforts against the country’s powerful street gangs to another level by sending inmates into cemeteries to destroy the tombs of gang members at a time of year when families typically visit their loved ones’ graves.

On March 26, El Salvador’s street gangs had killed 62 people across the country, igniting a nationwide furor.

Millennial leaders are rising at the United Nations General Assembly.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has told the U.N. General Assembly that wealthy countries should help — or at least not block — developing countries charting their own paths.

In the hours after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced he would seek re-election despite a constitutional ban, opinion quickly divided.

Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s government has closed seven radio stations this week owned by the Roman Catholic church, as well as two other outlets serving the largely rural northern area with a history of opposition.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin-boosting president is asking people to be patient after the price of the cryptocurrency fell below $20,000 _ less than half the price the government paid.

In the run-up to this week's Summit of the Americas, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador rebuffed attempts by U.S. officials to set up a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Vice President Kamala Harris says the Biden administration's work to attract investment to Central America has generated $3.2 billion in private-sector commitments.

Over the past 10 weeks, El Salvador’s security forces have arrested more than 36,000 people since the congress granted President Nayib Bukele the power to suspend some civil liberties to pursue powerful street gangs.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has started a five-day tour to four Central American countries and Cuba by lashing out at the U.S. government.

El Salvador’s congress has granted a request by President Nayib Bukele to extend an anti-gang emergency decree for another 30 days.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is calling on the government of El Salvador to respect human rights, after authorities declared a state of emergency and rounded up 14,000 suspected gang members.

El Salvador's security forces have arrested more than 10,000 suspected gang members in just over two weeks under rules that free them from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer.

Thousands of cryptocurrency enthusiasts are gathering in Miami as the city builds its reputation as one of the key locations to develop the blockchain technology despite its underdog status.

El Salvador’s security forces have intensified their operations against the country’s street gangs with mass arrests, the cordoning off of entire neighborhoods and house-by-house searches under a state of emergency sought by President Nayib Bukele.

The government of El Salvador has arrested more than 600 gang suspects and ordered reductions in food for inmates, after a wave of killings over the weekend.

El Salvador's congress has granted President Nayib Bukele's request to declare a state of emergency, amid a wave of gang-related killings over the weekend.

Four Salvadoran women all had sought medical help for obstetric emergencies, and each ended up in prison sentenced to 30 years on aggravated homicide convictions for allegedly terminating their pregnancies.

The International Monetary Fund says that El Salvador should dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury.

The International Monetary Fund wants El Salvador to drop the highly volatile cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender and strictly regulate the electronic wallet the government has pushed adoption of across the country.

In a story published January 13, 2022, about the hacking of journalists' cellphones in El Salvador, The Associated Press erroneously reported the last name of one of the journalists involved.

Abortion rights groups say President Nayib Bukele’s government has freed three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the nation’s strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies.

Former student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician won the country’s presidential runoff.

Allegations from the U.S. government that El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration negotiated with the country’s powerful street gangs touched a sensitive topic.

The U.S. Treasury says the government of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele secretly negotiated a truce with leaders of the country’s powerful street gangs.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele says his government will build an oceanside “Bitcoin City” at the base of a volcano.

At a geothermal power plant near El Salvador’s Tecapa volcano, 300 computers whir inside a trailer as they make complex mathematical calculations day and night verifying transactions for the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Salvadorans trying to pay for a cup of coffee or receive money sent from relatives in the United States using the cryptocurrency bitcoin continued struggling to perform transactions, a day after El Salvador made it legal tender.

El Salvador has become the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, but the rollout stumbled in its first hours.

El Salvador’s top court and its election authority have tossed aside what seemed to be a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential reelection.

A judge in El Salvador has ordered the pre-trial arrest of 10 former government officials, including ex-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, on corruption charges.

Prosecutors in El Salvador have issued an arrest warrant for former president Salvador Sánchez Cerén on charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

In El Salvador, most are not bothered by President Nayib Bukele’s dictatorial maneuvers -- sending armed troops into congress to coerce a vote, or ousting independent judges from the country’s highest court, paving the way to control all branches of government.

After El Salvador’s congress made the bitcoin legal tender this week, eyes turned to the rural fishing village of El Zonte on the Pacific coast.

El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly has approved legislation making the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender in the country, the first country to do so.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has announced in a recorded message played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami that next week he will send proposed legislation to the country’s congress that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to entice Central American nations to tackle the corruption and poverty that have helped drive a surge of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border and presented an early challenge for the Biden administration.

The New England Patriots’ team plane has delivered 500,000 Chinese-made COVID vaccines to El Salvador.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's Cabinet chief and other allies have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt by the U.S. State Department.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has issued an executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of wearing masks in public schools.

The United States says it is gravely concerned over a vote by El Salvador’s new congress to remove magistrates of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court.

Aides to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele say he's refused to meet with a visiting senior U.S. diplomat over what he sees as a pattern of slights from Democrats and the Biden administration.

Saúl Meléndez was a guerrilla fighter during El Salvador’s civil war.

Young women place flowers on the perimeter wall of the Quintana Roo state offices sprayed with graffiti that reads in Spanish "Justice for Victoria," during a protest in Mexico City, Monday, March. The demonstrators were protesting the police killing in Tulum, Quintana Roo state, of Salvadoran national Victoria Esperanza Salazar when a female police officer knelt on her back to cuff her. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)MEXICO CITY – A Salvadoran woman who died in police custody over the weekend in a Caribbean beach resort had also suffered abuse by her companion, who has been arrested, Mexican authorities said Tuesday. Quintana Roo state Gov. Salazar's death increased tensions in Quintana Roo, where police used live ammunition to ward off a throng of about 100 demonstrators in Cancun in November.

Young women place flowers on the perimeter wall of the Quintana Roo state offices sprayed with graffiti that reads in Spanish "Justice for Victoria," during a protest in Mexico City, Monday, March. “She was brutally murdered by Tulum police officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico,” the president wrote. In the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, Salazar requested and received refugee status. AdProtest marches were scheduled for later Monday in Tulum, Mexico City and San Salvador. AdThe woman’s death seemed likely to ignite tensions in Quintana Roo, where police used live ammunition to ward off a throng of about 100 demonstrators in Cancun in November.