The Clinton administration was so eager to demonstrate its toughness on crime that it had deported hardened criminals without warning the Salvadoran authorities. Its disregard was even more egregious because the US embassy, more or less simultaneously, had also been dictating whom the government named to top posts in the national police force. Between 1993 and 1996, four thousand teenagers and young men with thick criminal records were sent to El Salvador. Many of them had been arrested for robberies, kidnappings, and homicides.
