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      Trump officials step up defiance over man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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      The Trump administration escalated its stubborn defiance against securing the release of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador on Monday, advancing new misrepresentations of a US supreme court order.The supreme court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang.But at an Oval Office meeting between Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, Trump deferred to officials who gave extraordinary readings of the supreme court order and claimed the US was powerless to return Abrego Garcia to US soil.“The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, we could deport him a second time,” said Trump’s policy chief Stephen Miller, about an order that, in fact, upheld a lower court’s directive to return Abrego Garcia.Miller’s remarks went beyond the tortured reading offered by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, who also characterized the supreme court order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Abrego Garcia if released by El Salvador.“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s up to them,” Bondi said. “The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane.”The remarks at the Oval Office meeting marked an escalation by Trump officials to resist complying with a supreme court order by manufacturing uncertainty in the ruling that reiterated deportations were subject to judicial review.And the fact that the US is paying El Salvador to detain deportees it sends to the notorious Cecot prison undercut the notion that the administration lacked the power to return Abrego Garcia into US custody.The case started when Abrego Garcia was detained by police in 2019 in Maryland, outside a Home Depot, with several other men, and asked about a murder. He denied knowledge of a crime and repeatedly denied that he was part of a gang.Abrego Garcia was subsequently put in immigration proceedings, where officials argued they believed he was part of the MS-13 gang in New York based on his Chicago Bulls gear and on the word of a confidential informant.The case went before a US immigration judge, who suggested that Abrego Garcia could be a member of MS-13 and agreed to a deportation order but shielded him from being sent to El Salvador because he was likely to face persecution there by a local gang.The Trump administration did not appeal against that decision, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since said in a court filing that Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was an “administrative error”. The supreme court also called his removal illegal.In earlier remarks to reporters on Monday morning, Miller expressly demonstrated he knew the administration had made a mistake because the immigration judge had issued a so-called withholding order, which meant he could not be deported to El Salvador.“When you have a withholding order, to be clear, that is not ‘pause your deportation’. In other words, in the worst-case scenario, it means you get deported to another country,” Miller said.That concession evaporated hours later when he joined Trump, Bukele and a dozen senior officials in the Oval Office and suggested that bringing back Abrego Garcia to the US would be tantamount to kidnapping a citizen of El Salvador.Miller appeared to be suggesting that the US could not force the actions of El Salvador, a sovereign nation. But he then said the supreme court said neither the president nor the secretary of state could forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador – which the order did not say. More

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      The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

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      It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.The US government has admitted it deported Abrego García by mistake. But instead of “facilitating” his return as ordered by the supreme court, the administration has trapped Abrego García in a catch-22 by offshoring his fate to a jurisdiction beyond the reach of legality – or, it would seem, basic logic or common decency.The paradox is this: the Trump administration says it cannot facilitate the return of Abrego García because he is in a prison in El Salvador. El Salvador says it cannot return him because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.The absurdity of the position played out on Monday during an Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Bukele where the two men appeared to enjoy mocking the powerlessness of the US courts to intervene in the fate of anyone caught in the maws of the Trump administration’s deportation machine.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked about whether he would help to return Abrego García.There is no evidence that Abrego García is a terrorist or a member of the gang MS-13 as the Trump administration has claimed. But that is not really important here.“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said during a meeting with the US president on Monday. “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” Trump added.Trump’s lieutenants also jumped in on Monday, arguing that they could not intervene in the case because Bukele is a foreign citizen and outside of their control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He is a citizen of El Salvador,” said Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide who regularly advises the president on immigration issues. “It’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”A district court injunction to halt the deportation was in effect, he added, an order to “kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here”.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, repeated one of the Trump administration’s mantras: that US courts cannot determine Trump’s foreign policy. Increasingly, the administration is including questions of immigration in that foreign policy in order to defy the courts.Monday’s presentation was in effect a pantomime. Both sides could quickly intervene if they wanted to. But this was a means to an end. Miller said this case would not end with Abrego García living in the US.More broadly, it indicates the Trump administration’s modus operandi: to move quickly before the courts can react to its transgressions and, when they do, to deflect and defy until the damage done cannot be reversed. More

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      US deports 10 more alleged gang members to El Salvador, says Rubio

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      The US has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House.“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Rubio said in an Twitter/X post.The alliance between Donald Trump and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”, Rubio added.The US president is due to meet Bukele at the White House on Monday.Trump said on Saturday he was looking forward to meeting Bukele and praised him for taking “enemy aliens” from the United States. He said the two countries were working closely to “eradicate terrorist organizations”.Administration officials have repeatedly made public statements alleging that detained immigrants are gang members that they have not backed up in court.The Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were. The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to Tren de Aragua, which it labels a terrorist organization.The deportations have been challenged in federal court. The US supreme court said the US government must give sufficient notice to immigrant detainees to allow them to contest their deportations. It did not say how those already in El Salvador could seek judicial review of their removals.The White House has come under fire recently after a Maryland man was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. He was deported on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador made up chiefly of Venezuelans whom the government had accused of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Trump administration lawyers were able to confirm on Saturday that Kilmar Abrego García, 29, remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador. However, the White House did not detail the steps it was taking to return Abrego García to the United States. More

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      Trump’s already skirting due process. Now he’s musing about deporting citizens | Moira Donegan

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      They’re rounding people up, and you could be next. The Trump administration has largely dispensed with due process rights in deporting immigrants, who are now being targeted for their protected speech, having their visas or green cards summarily cancelled without process and sometimes without notice, and getting kidnapped off the streets and hustled into vans so that they can be shipped to “detention centers” too far away for their loved ones, or their lawyers, to visit them.Some immigrants are being targeted for disappearance because they oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, an opinion that it is now physically dangerous, instead of merely unpopular, to hold. But others the government seems to be seizing almost at random. More than 200 Venezuelan nationals have been seized and deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, rendered outside of US jurisdiction in defiance of judges’ orders demanding that their deportation flights be stopped. Of those Venezuelans, most had no criminal record. Other deportees, like the Maryland father and sheet metal worker Kilmar Abrego García, seem to have been deported by mistake; the Trump administration says that Abrego García, who they admit they did not mean to deport, will not be brought back to his family in the United States. Conveniently, the fact that they have deported him to a foreign prison is supposed, in the Trump administration’s logic, to absolve them of responsibility for putting him there. “We suggest the judge contact [Salvadoran] President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador,” the White House said, obnoxiously, after a judge ordered them to bring Abrego García back.Meanwhile, the sadism of the deportations, and the cruelty of the Salvadoran prison where the men are being kept, seem to hold a kind of aesthetic appeal for the Trump camp. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, recently flew to the El Salvador prison for a photoshoot with the captives there, where she stood in front of a crowd of men packed into a cell behind bars with her hair coiffed in long beachy waves.Now, the Trump administration may be seeking to extend the lawlessness and cruelty of its deportation regime to the next logical target: American citizens. The White House spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed on Tuesday that the Trump administration is considering pathways to deport citizens as well. “The president has discussed this idea quite a few times publicly. He’s also discussed it privately. You’re referring to the president’s idea for American citizens to potentially be deported,” she said. “The president has said, if it’s legal, if there is a legal pathway to do that, he’s not sure.”This would be illegal. But so is so much of what the Trump administration is doing with its deportation policies. It is illegal to cancel visas and green cards without due process, as the Trump administration has done and continues to do as part of a widening dragnet in its anti-immigrant purges. It is illegal to target immigrants for their speech, as the Trump administration has done to pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide activists, from Rümeysa Öztürk to Mahmoud Khalil. It is illegal to deport people to a foreign prison where they have no recourse to enforce their rights and no path to pursue their freedom – it is illegal to do this, as the Trump administration has done, specifically to prevent its victims from seeking to enforce their own rights in American courts. And it is illegal to ignore the binding orders of federal judges to stop all of this conduct in order to ensure that the deportations can continue, punishing innocent people, silencing protected speech, and scaring whole populations out of work, travel, political participation or any of the other daily dignities that they are supposed to be entitled to in this country.But the law, increasingly, is whatever the Trump administration decides it is. And there is no force that seems prepared to make them obey the law when their will does not incline them to do so.That is because the supreme court has been no help, and if anything has acted, so far, as all but an accomplice to Trump’s dismantling of the rule of law in his pursuit of anti-immigrant vengeance. Lower court judges have attempted to intervene on behalf of the disappeared immigrants, issuing orders commanding the Trump administration to stop deportations under a long-dormant 1798 wartime measure known as the Alien Enemies Act, and to return Abrego García to the US immediately. But the supreme court has stepped in to pause these orders, allowing the Trump administration’s deportation agenda to continue. In the Abrego García case, the court weakened a district court order to “effectuate” the innocent man’s freedom and return to a mere command that they “facilitate” it, and only in ways that don’t interfere with the executive branch’s foreign policy prerogatives – in practice, a weakening of the demand to bring Abrego García back home to a request that the Trump administration provide more plausible deniability when they refuse to do so. And while Brett Kavanaugh weighed in with a concurrence to make a pious declaration of the need for due process in deportation proceedings, the court’s actions speak louder than its words: they are allowing the kidnapping and deportation of US residents to continue without due process.The legal precedents being established in these immigration disappearance cases have no limiting principles: if visa holders, asylum seekers and legal permanent residents can be snatched and deported with effectively no practicable recourse to due process protections, then there is no reason why citizens can’t be. It is in the interest of every American citizen to take an active stand in defense of our immigrant neighbors. Because once the Trump administration decides that they have no rights, then neither do we. More

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      Trump authorizes US military to take control of land at US-Mexico border

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      Donald Trump has authorized the military to take control of land at the US-Mexico border as part of the president’s broader efforts to crack down on undocumented immigration.The authorization came late on Friday in a memorandum from Trump to interior secretary Doug Burgum, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins, outlining new policies concerning military involvement at the US’s southern border.The memorandum, entitled “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions”, allows the US’s armed forces to “take a more direct role” when it comes to securing the boundary in question.“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats,” the order claimed. “The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”The memorandum added that the Department of Defense should be given jurisdiction to federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60ft-wide strip that stretches over California, Arizona and New Mexico. Doing that would give troops stationed there the legal right to detain immigrants accused of trespassing on what in effect is an elongated base – and unauthorized immigrants would be held in custody until they could be turned over to immigration agents.Military activities that could be carried out on federal land include “border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment”, according to the memorandum.After 45 days, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will assess the “initial phase” of the order. But at any time, Hegseth could extend the amount of federal land included in the memorandum.The ordered military takeover excludes Native American reservations, according to the memorandum.Friday’s order is the latest step from Trump in his administration’s ongoing focus on immigration enforcement, which has involved declaring a national emergency on the southern border.On Thursday, a US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was allowed to require people who are in the country but not citizens to register with the federal government, a requirement that advocates say hasn’t been universally implemented since it was enacted as a law in the 1940s.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the new requirement on 25 February, adding that those who failed to report could face fines or possible prison time.The DHS’s announcement was widely seen as a workaround of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars US military troops from participating in most civilian law enforcement actions.One of the purported justifications for militarizing the US border most commonly cited by Trump and his Republican colleagues is that people crossing the border with Mexico without permission carry much of the fentanyl sold in the US. Yet official statistics show 90% of convicted fentanyl peddlers are US citizens. More

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      Panama opposition party accuses US of ‘camouflaged invasion’

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      Panamanian opposition politicians have accused the US of launching a “camouflaged invasion” of the country, amid simmering discontent over the government’s handling of the diplomatic crisis.After a three-day visit by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump appeared to confirm that US military personnel had been deployed to the Central American country on Thursday, telling reporters: “We’ve moved a lot of troops to Panama.”Hegseth said that the US would increase its military presence at three former US bases in the country to “secure the Panama canal from Chinese influence”.The last US military bases in Panama were vacated in 1999 as a condition of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter treaties to hand the canal to Panamanian ownership. Under the canal’s neutrality treaty, no foreign power can “maintain military forces, defense sites and military installations within its national territory”, and the US comments have prompted outrage in Panama.“This is a camouflaged invasion,” said Ricardo Lombana, the leader of the opposition Other Way Movement. “An invasion without firing a shot, but with a cudgel and threats.”At a Wednesday press conference to announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US, Panama’s minister of public security, Frank Abrego, said the agreement would not impinge on his nation’s sovereignty and that the country would not accept military bases.However, a full text of the MOU included aerial photos of Fort Sherman, Rodman naval base and Howard air force base, with areas outlined for “training”, “humanitarian activities” and the “installation of US property”.The Panamanian government says they are not “military bases” and that the deal is temporary, but opposition parties have rejected such claims.“If you have an installation which is for use of foreign soldiers and they have control over what happens inside – and Panama has to ask in advance to enter – that’s a military base,” said Lombana.For many Panamanians, the return of US armed forces – even for supposed “joint operations” – will bring back uncomfortable memories of 1989’s Operation Just Cause, when American troops killed thousands of civilians.A second agreement allows US navy ships to be reimbursed for the fees they pay to the canal. That preferential treatment would appear to violate the neutrality treatment and could open the door to further attempts to negotiate down the fees charged by the canal.On Thursday a local lawyer filed a legal case against the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, accusing him of “crimes against the international personality of the state”.Frustration is growing over the government’s handling of the diplomatic crisis. Since Trump declared his plan to “take back” the Panama canal on his 20 January inauguration speech, all communication on the topic has been through Mulino and the details of negotiations kept largely secret.This has led to serious differences in the US and Panamanian accounts of those negotiations. When the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, visited in early February, Mulino told press that the meeting had been “very cordial” and that the canal was not under threat. Later, however, Rubio said the situation around the canal was “unacceptable” and Trump continued to call for the return of the canal.The latest example came on Tuesday when two different statements concerning Hegseth’s meeting with Mulino were published. In the Panamanian version, Hegseth was said to have recognized Panama’s “inalienable sovereignty” over the canal, but those words were absent from the secretary of defense’s statement and Hegseth refused to acknowledge Panamanian ownership of the canal at Wednesday’s press conference. Panama says that the US omitted the phrase from the agreed joint statement.Mulino has also opted to avoid engaging with other countries – such as Canada and Mexico – to gain international support for his country’s cause.On Thursday the local chapter of Transparency International requested on X that Mulino “inform the country of all the details of what is happening, the agreements in process and the pressures he is receiving if that is the case. The country requires transparency in order to achieve unity against this threat to our sovereignty.”Even before Hegseth’s visit, Mulino had faced heavy local criticism for offering concessions to the US without gaining firm assurances over the future of the canal.Two-thirds of Panamanians disapprove of the way he is running the country. In addition to the diplomatic crisis he has passed an unpopular social security reform and angered environmentalists by opening talks with a copper mine closed down in 2023 due to popular protest. He lacks the backing of many of his party’s deputies in congress who are loyal to his political patron, Ricardo Martinelli, who has been residing in the Nicaraguan embassy to escape corruption charges and recently saw his attempt to gain exile in that country rejected.Popular demonstrations against US policy and the handling of the government are expected on Saturday. More

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      Pentagon chief says US could ‘revive’ Panama bases

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      The US defence secretary has floated the idea of the country’s troops returning to Panama to “secure” its strategically vital canal, a suggestion quickly shot down by the Central American country’s government.Pete Hegseth suggested during a visit to Panama that “by invitation” the US could “revive” military bases or naval air stations and rotate deployments of its troops to an isthmus the US invaded 35 years ago.He also said his country was seeking free passage through the canal for its navy ships – which Donald Trump had said were “severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form”.Trump, since coming to power in January, has repeatedly claimed that China has too much influence over the canal, which handles about 40% of US container traffic and 5% of world trade.His administration has vowed to “take back” control of the strategic waterway that the US funded, built and controlled until 1999.Hegseth suggested on Wednesday the former US military bases that dot Panama could be used again to host American troops.He said a deal signed with Panama this week was an “opportunity to revive, whether it’s the military base, naval air station, locations where US troops can work with Panamanian troops to enhance capabilities and cooperate in a rotational way”.While Hegseth cited the possibility of joint exercises, the mention of a rotational force was likely to raise the hackles of Panamanians, for whom sole ownership of the canal is a source of national pride.The US has long participated in military exercises in Panama. However, a longer-term rotational force – such as the force the USmaintains in Darwin, Australia – is politically toxic for Panama’s centre-right leader, José Raúl Mulino.His government quickly slapped down the idea. “Panama made clear, through President Mulino, that we cannot accept military bases or defence sites,” said Panama’s security minister, Frank Abrego, in a joint public appearance with Hegseth.Hegseth also said the US was seeking an agreement under which its warships could pass through the canal “first, and free”.Jose Ramón Icaza, Panama’s minister for canal affairs, said: “We will seek a mechanism by which warships and auxiliary ships can have a compensation system for services, that is, a way to make them cost-neutral but not free.”The independent Panama Canal Authority (PCA) that manages the waterway said on Wednesday that it was seeking a “cost-neutral scheme” to compensate services rendered in security matters for warship tolls.Under current treaties, the canal is open to all countries and vessels must pay the same rates according to their capacity and cargo, regardless of their country of origin or destination.The PCA said the US recognised Panamanian sovereignty over the waterway, although Hegseth did not mention it in the news conference.The Pentagon chief’s two-day visit has been peppered with comments about China and its influence in Latin America. He said the US was not looking for war with China but would counter Beijing’s “threats” to the region.“We do not seek war with China. And war with China is certainly not inevitable. We do not seek it in any form,” Hegseth said. “But together, we must prevent war by robustly and vigorously deterring China’s threats in this hemisphere,” the former Fox News anchor said.China hit back after Hegseth’s comments, saying Washington officials “maliciously attacked China … exposing the US’s bullying nature”.Trump has zeroed in on the role of a Hong Kong company that has operated ports at either end of the canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for decades.Hegseth asserted that China-based companies were also capturing Latin American land and infrastructure in strategic sectors, such as energy and telecommunications, and that China had too large a military presence in the hemisphere.“Make no mistake, Beijing is investing and operating in this region for military advantage and unfair economic gain,” he said.Under pressure from the White House, Panama has accused the Hong Kong-backed Panama Ports Company of failing to meet its contractual obligations and pushed for it to pull out of the country.The company rejected an audit on Wednesday that suggested it had failed to pay $1.2bn due under its concession.The ports’ parent company, CK Hutchison, announced last month a deal to offload 43 ports in 23 countries – including its two on the Panama canal – to a consortium led by the US asset manager BlackRock for $19bn in cash. A furious Beijing has since announced an antitrust review of the deal.The US invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the dictator Manuel Noriega, killing more than 500 Panamanians and razing parts of the capital. More

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      China fires back after Pete Hegseth calls country a threat to Panama canal

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      US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that the Panama canal faces ongoing threats from China but that together the United States and Panama will keep it secure.Hegseth’s remarks triggered a fiery response from the Chinese government, which said: “Who represents the real threat to the Canal? People will make their own judgement.”Speaking at a ribbon cutting for a new US-financed dock at the Vasco Nuñez de Balboa Naval Base after a meeting with Panama president, José Raúl Mulino, Hegseth said the US will not allow China or any other country to threaten the canal’s operation.“To this end, the United States and Panama have done more in recent weeks to strengthen our defense and security cooperation than we have in decades,” he said.Hegseth alluded to ports at either end of the canal that are controlled by a Hong Kong consortium, which is in the process of selling its controlling stake to another consortium including BlackRock Inc.“China-based companies continue to control critical infrastructure in the canal area,” Hegseth said. “That gives China the potential to conduct surveillance activities across Panama. This makes Panama and the United States less secure, less prosperous and less sovereign. And as President Donald Trump has pointed out, that situation is not acceptable.”Hegseth met with Mulino for two hours on Tuesday morning before heading to the naval base that previously had been the US Rodman naval station.On the way, Hegseth posted a photo on Twitter/X of the two men laughing and said it was an honor speaking with Mulino. “You and your country’s hard work is making a difference. Increased security cooperation will make both our nations safer, stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote.The visit comes amid tensions over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that the US is being overcharged to use the Panama canal and that China has influence over its operations – allegations that Panama has denied.Shortly after the meeting, the Chinese embassy in Panama slammed the US government in a statement on X, saying the US has used “blackmail” to further its own interests and that who Panama carries out business with is a “sovereign decision of Panama … and something the U.S. doesn’t have the right to interfere in”.“The US has carried out a sensationalistic campaign about the ‘theoretical Chinese threat’ in an attempt to sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation, which is all just rooted in the United State’s own geopolitical interests,” the embassy wrote.After Hegseth and Mulino spoke by phone in February, the US state department said that an agreement had been reached to not charge US warships to pass through the canal. Mulino publicly denied there was any such deal.The US president has gone so far as to suggest the US never should have turned the canal over to Panama and that maybe that it should take the canal back.The China concern was provoked by the Hong Kong consortium holding a 25-year lease on ports at either end of the canal. The Panamanian government announced that lease was being audited and late on Monday concluded that there were irregularities.The Hong Kong consortium, however, has already announced that CK Hutchison would be selling its controlling stake in the ports to a consortium including BlackRock Inc, in effect putting the ports under US control once the sale is complete.Secretary of state Marco Rubio told Mulino during a visit in February that Trump believes China’s presence in the canal area may violate a treaty that led the US to turn the waterway over to Panama in 1999. That treaty calls for the permanent neutrality of the US-built canal.Mulino has denied that China has any influence in the operations of the canal. In February, he expressed frustration at the persistence of the narrative. “We aren’t going to speak about what is not reality, but rather those issues that interest both countries,” he said.The US built the canal in the early 1900s as it looked for ways to facilitate the transit of commercial and military vessels between its coasts. Washington relinquished control of the waterway to Panama on 31 December 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by Jimmy Carter.“I want to be very clear, China did not build this canal,” Hegseth said on Tuesday. “China does not operate this canal and China will not weaponize this canal. Together with Panama in the lead, we will keep the canal secure and available for all nations through the deterrent power of the strongest, most effective and most lethal fighting force in the world.” More