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Timeline › 2025 › March › 15

March 15, 2025

3 entries on this date.

Trump invoked Alien Enemies Act for CECOT transfer bundled with secret Bukele prisoner exchange, defying court order

On March 15, 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to fly more than 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's CECOT prison without individualized hearings, defying a federal judge's same-day order to turn the planes around. A diplomatic note later declassified shows the operation was bundled with a separate request: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele personally asked for the return of MS-13 leader César Antonio Lopez Larios, and El Salvador agreed to also hold up to 500 Tren de Aragua members for a year, in exchange for undisclosed U.S. financial and in-kind support.

Hegseth shared classified Yemen strike plans in a Signal chat that inadvertently included a journalist

On March 15, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed Yemen strike operational details — aircraft types, weapons packages, and attack timing — in a Signal group chat roughly two hours before the strikes began. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had created the chat on March 11 and inadvertently added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on March 13, who published his account on March 24-25 after the administration disputed his description of the content.

ICE agent fatally shot U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez at a South Padre Island traffic stop; federal role concealed for nearly a year

On March 15, 2025, ICE agent Jack C. Stevens fatally shot Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, during a traffic stop near an accident scene on South Padre Island, Texas. Agents said Martinez accelerated his vehicle toward an officer, but the sole eyewitness said the car was stopping and Martinez "never hit the gas" when the shots were fired, and no agent present wore a body camera. Authorities described the killing only as an "officer-involved shooting" and concealed for nearly a year that a federal immigration officer fired the fatal shots, a fact that emerged in 2026 through a public-records lawsuit rather than government disclosure.