El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has agreed to imprison convicted criminals from any country that have been ordered deported out of the United States.
The extraordinary offer was made after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Bukele in San Salvador, the country’s capital city, to discuss a range of bilateral issues. The Central American leader not only agreed to take back his own country’s deportees, but also offered his “mega-prison” to house MS-13 members, Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gangbangers and any other criminal from around the world — including U.S. citizens.
The offer could prove crucial for the Trump White House as it moves forward with its detention and deportation operation after the unprecedented border crisis that was sparked during the previous administration. The 8.5 million border encounters that occurred at the U.S.-Mexico border during President Joe Biden’s era resulted in an unprecedented growth of the country’s illegal migrant population.
“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” Bukele posted on social media Monday night. “We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee.”
“The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable,” he continued.
The State Department confirmed the offer in a statement, adding that the “extraordinary gesture” has never been extended before by any other country.
“President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully,” said State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce. “He also promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country.”
The agreement follows an announcement in January by President Donald Trump that he would be utilizing a section of Guantanamo Bay to detain “the worst criminal illegal aliens.” The president said he would be sending up to 30,000 migrants with deportation orders to the Cuba-based naval base.
Previous administrations have utilized Guantanamo Bay for migrant detention in the past. The Clinton administration processed thousands of Haitians and housed Cuban asylum seekers at the naval base during the 1990s, and the Obama administration considered similar measures after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the Biden administration also mulled the idea.
El Salvador, where the international crime syndicate MS-13 has a major presence, has long been plagued with violent crime. However, Bukele has made incredible strides in reducing his country’s crime rate since assuming office in 2019 through a no-nonsense policy of mass incarceration.
The Central American leader oversaw a 70% reduction of the country’s murder rate in 2023. When asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation in February 2024 how the U.S. could reduce crime rates in major cities, Bukele simply said “incarcerate the criminals.”
Sending deportees to El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay potentially solves two major hurdles for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda: recalcitrant countries that refuse to accept their deported citizens back and limited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention space. Racking up available bed space by the thousands can prevent ICE detention centers from being forced to release illegal migrants back into the community due to overcrowding.
Trump successfully coerced the Colombian president into taking back his county’s deportees after threatening him with stiff tariffs, and the Venezuelan government has also recently agreed to begin accepting their repatriated citizens.
Several high-profile criminal migrants were detained and released at the border before going on to commit heinous crimes in the U.S., such as Laken Riley’s killer Jose Ibarra and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray’s alleged killers. More detention space can potentially help federal immigration authorities avoid releasing illegal migrants from custody.
Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said to the media after meeting with him at his lakeside country house outside San Salvador.
The historic offer from El Salvador immediately followed Rubio’s trip to Panama, in which he successfully prevented the key Central American country from renewing an infrastructure agreement with China, reducing the communist country’s influence in the region.
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