Trump to name DHS official Troy Edgar to be ambassador to El Salvador, sources say

President Trump intends to name the deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department to be the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, a major shift in the DHS leadership structure, multiple sources told CBS News. 

Troy Edgar was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March, making him eligible for the new role without further Senate approval. No start date has been set yet, but it's likely to be soon, two sources said.

Spokespeople for the White House and Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately comment. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Edgar have had a good working relationship, multiple sources say.

El Salvador has played a high-profile role in the Trump administration's sweeping illegal immigration crackdown. The president in March invoked a 200-year-old wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to send migrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador as he sought to deport individuals his administration accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. CBS News previously reported that many of the men do not have criminal convictions. 

The men imprisoned in El Salvador were returned to Venezuela in a U.S.-brokered swap over the summer. A report by human rights groups last month determined that the deportation and treatment of the more than 200 Venezuelan migrants at the prison amounted to arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance under international law.

Mr. Trump met in April with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a populist who has won the admiration of conservatives in the U.S. for his crackdown on gangs under a state of exception, which empowered police and the military to arrest people on suspicion of gang affiliation without due process.

Last month, the administration reached a framework for reciprocal trade agreements with South and Central American countries including El Salvador. 

Edgar worked during Mr. Trump's first term as the agency's chief financial officer and as an associate deputy undersecretary overseeing a $90 billion budget and funding for immigration policies and border wall construction, according to DHS.

Federal immigration authorities recently began enhanced operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area targeting a region with a large population of Somali immigrants, and an immigration enforcement crackdown in New Orleans, the latest Democratic-led city to see a surge in Border Patrol agents.