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El Salvador‘s President Nayib Bukele has confirmed that his country will take “dangerous” U.S. prison inmates into the infamous CECOT prison in exchange for payment following a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Bukele made the offer during a three-hour discussion with Rubio at his Lake Coatepeque residence outside the nation’s capital of San Salvador on Monday.
“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. The fee would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable,” Bukele wrote in a message on X late on Monday.
Deportees from the U.S. of any nationality are due to be held in the CECOT (Center for the Confinement of Terrorism) mega-prison complex in Tecoluca, which was opened in 2024 and is the biggest in all of Latin America, holding up to 40,000 inmates.
The agreement would include U.S. citizens and others with legal status. However, after Rubio’s address, a U.S. official said the Trump administration had no current plans to try to deport American citizens.
For his part, Rubio bragged to reporters that the president agreed to the “most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”
“He has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those with US citizenship and legal residency. No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this. We are profoundly grateful,” the former Florida senator added.
Rubio also said he briefed President Donald Trump about the proposal before disclosing it publicly. Staunch Trump ally and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, also endorsed the “great idea” on X.
A similar agreement, known as the “safe third country” agreement, was due to be implemented in 2019 before it fell through in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This new agreement is likely to be met with extreme legal scrutiny. The opposition leader in El Salvador, Manuel Flores of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, said the deal would make their country look like a place for the U.S. to “dump the garbage”.
According to the State Department’s description, El Salvador’s prisons are “harsh and dangerous.” The new deal is thought to be targeting gang members associated with MS-13 and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua.
“In many facilities, provisions for sanitation, potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are inadequate or nonexistent,” the description reads.
Rubio said that El Salvador will also accept its own citizens who have been living undocumented in the U.S. as well as other nationalities.
Since his return to the White House last month, Trump has prioritized deporting undocumented persons.
In addition to the mooted plan with El Salvador, the administration is also considering housing migrants on the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Bukele gained power in El Salvador in 2019 with a promise to crack down on the country’s gangs and tackle the drug industry. His tactics have been decried by human rights advocates across the world.
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