El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made a controversial offer to the Trump administration on Monday night, agreeing to accept deportees of any nationality from the US, including violent American criminals, who could be housed in El Salvador’s controversial mega-prisons.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool)

This unprecedented offer—which will likely face significant legal challenges were the American government to accept—comes after a productive meeting between Bukele and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been on an extended diplomatic tour of Latin America to build support for President Donald Trump’s immigration/deportation policies.

“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” said Bukele. “We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted US citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee.”

While Bukele indicated that this fee will be “relatively low” by American standards, it will be a significant funding boost for the Salvadoran prison system.

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Following his meeting with Bukele, Rubio hailed the offer as an act of “extraordinary friendship” that “will make both countries stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”

“President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully,” Rubio’s office said in a statement. “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. And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.”

Critics have raised legal and ethical concerns over the implications of outsourcing incarceration to a country known for its harsh prison conditions. El Salvador already has the highest incarceration rate in the world, due in large part to Bukele’s historic crackdown on gang activity.

(El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

Following a gang-related killing spree in 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency that still remains in effect, permitting Salvadoran police to easily pursue, arrest, and jail suspected gang members without trial. The suspects’ usual rights to a lawyer and court approval of detention have been suspended, with members of the notorious MS-13 gang becoming the primary targets.

At the height of the crackdown in 2023, Salvadoran security forces arrested 75,000 suspected gang membersapproximately 1% of the country’s 6,600,000 people. As a result, El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low of 114 homicides, marking a dramatic decline from the 6,656 homicides reported in 2015.

Related: El Salvador Murder Rate Drops 70% After Arresting 1% of Population

To facilitate these mass incarcerations, Bukele ordered the construction of gigantic detention facilities across the country, including the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca. This sprawling complex housed 14,532 inmates as of summer 2024, but has a capacity of over 40,000—space Bukele is now prepared to offer to the Trump administration.

However, while American officials have responded to the offer with appreciation, there are currently no plans to begin shipping prisoners to El Salvador. Such a plan would likely be met with legal challenges, not the least of which is the fact that the US government cannot deport citizens.

Furthermore, under the Biden administration, the US State Department determined that El Salvador’s prisons are already overcrowded, with inmates forced to endure “harsh and dangerous.” According to the department’s website, in most Salvadoran correctional facilities, “provisions for sanitation, potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are inadequate or nonexistent.” As such, efforts to send American prisoners to these facilities could be met with constitutional objections based on Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

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Connor Walcott is the lead writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”

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