El Salvador has offered to take in criminals deported from the US, including those with US citizenship, and house them in its mega-jail.
The deal was announced after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele during his visit to the central American nation.
Bukele – whose iron-fist approach to gangs has won him plaudits from voters but been heavily criticised by human rights groups – said he had offered the US “the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system”.
Rubio said the US was “profoundly grateful” to Bukele, adding that “no country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this”.
Rubio told reporters: “He has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those with US citizenship and legal residency.”
Referring to two of the region’s most notorious transnational crime gangs, Rubio added that El Salvador would also take in deported migrants and “criminals from any nationality, be the MS-13 or Tren de Aragua”.
Bukele later confirmed the offer on X, specifying that “we are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted US citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee”.
He added that “the fee would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison sustainable”.
Since he came into office in 2019, Bukele has made cracking down on crime his government’s priority.
The newly built maximum-security jail he referred to, Cecot [Terrorism Confinement Centre], is at the centre of his drive to lock up and punish the most violent gang members.
The government celebrated the opening of the jail – which it says can hold up to 40,000 inmates – by releasing photos and videos of shaven-headed and tattooed prisoners stripped down to the waist being frogmarched along its corridors.
Source: BBC
