El Salvador offers to accept US criminals in its jails, including American citizens

AP News writes that Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has offered to accept US deportees of any nationality into his country’s prison, including US citizens and residents serving time in the United States.

The New York Times writes that the proposal was praised by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, despite not addressing if the scheme was legal or even technically possible.

“We can send them and he will put them in his jails”, Rubio declared, as cited by AP News, adding that the Salvadorian President “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world”.

“He’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they’re US citizens or legal residents”, Rubio highlighted, as quoted by AP News.

“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system”, the Salvadorian President wrote on social media X, formerly known as Twitter.

“The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable”, Bukele remarked, as cited by The New York Times.

Bukele expressed his intention to send criminals deported from the United States to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security mega prison built to house 40,000 inmates.

The New York Times explains that Nayib Bukele, who was elected President of El Salvador in 2019, is a controversial and polarizing figure both in his country and in the rest of Latin America.

On one hand, Bukele’s war on criminal gangs has earned him the praise of the Latin American Right and made him an extremely popular leader in his own country.

However, critics of the Salvadorian President question the due process of his mass incarcerations and his human rights records.

According to AP News, the State Department later declared that the Trump Administration has no current plans to deport US citizens to Central America but considered the offer from the Salvadorian government as significant.

AP News explains that the agreement Rubio discussed with the Salvadorian government to accept foreign nationals who have violated US Law is known as a “safe third country” agreement”.

US officials have suggested that such agreement could be a solution to send deported Venezuelan gang members that the government of Venezuela refuses to accept.

CBS News writes that the Trump Administration has also ended Temporary Protection Status, affected over 300,000 Venezuelan migrants currently residing in the United States, meaning that they will lose their work permits and deportation protection the following months.

The White House also sent special envoy Richard Grenell to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to negotiate accepting deported Venezuelan citizens.

Will the US government seriously consider sending waves of mass deportees and American convicts from the United States to El Salvador? It might sound far-fetched, but stranger things have happened under the Trump Administration.

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