President Nayib Bukele has offered to jail deported criminals from the United States. His prisons have earned him a reputation as being tough on crime, but have raised alarms over rights abuses.
A day after President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador offered to imprison convicted criminals from the United States, including U.S. citizens, the question of whether such a plan could actually be accepted and implemented was still unanswered.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stopped in El Salvador while visiting Central America this week, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would have to “study” the offer from Mr. Bukele to jail convicts from the United States, for a fee. “But it’s a very generous offer,” he said.
Mr. Rubio himself said it was unclear if the United States could legally send convicts, including Americans, to a foreign prison.
But the proposal has drawn attention to the prisons that Mr. Bukele has used in recent years to cripple the gangs that once ran rampant in El Salvador. They have become symbols of his strength and popularity, including with Mr. Trump — even as human rights groups say the crowded prisons are holding pens for tens of thousands of people rounded up in arrests that have ensnared innocents.
Analysts say it is unlikely such a plan would hold up in court, particularly where it concerns U.S. citizens.
But whether or not Mr. Bukele’s offer is ever actually acted on, analysts said it serves as a way for both nations’ governments to project a shared vision of a tough approach to lawbreakers.
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