El Salvador offers to house US prisoners for a fee

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said his country could take convicted prisoners from the United States for a fee.

During a visit by Secretary Marco Rubio, Bukele agreed on Monday to accept El Salvadoran gang members as well as ‘violent illegal immigrants from any country,’ the US State Department said in a statement.

Bukele also said El Salvador could accept American citizens and legal residents convicted of crimes and house them in maximum-security prisons; the State Department called it ‘an extraordinary gesture that has never been made by any country before’, but it is unclear whether Washington will accept this offer.

Bukele said on social media platform X: ‘We have offered the US the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. The price is relatively low for the US, but it will be significant for us and will make our entire prison system sustainable.’

Rubio is making his first international trip as secretary of state to Central America as he seeks to broker deals to support US President Donald Trump’s pledge to reduce ‘illegal immigration’.

Pressuring Latin American countries such as Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela to accept migrants deported from the United States, Trump has proposed holding those with criminal records at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where ‘high-profile terrorism suspects’ were previously held.

The United States reported record numbers of refugees arriving at its southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency, but these numbers have fallen dramatically in the last few months.

Bukele, who describes himself as the ‘CEO of El Salvador’, has some of the highest approval ratings in the region after reducing homicide rates by jailing more than 2 per cent of the adult population.

Most of the suspected gang members he has detained are awaiting trial and are held at the notorious Centre for the Incarceration of Terrorists (Cecot), one of the world’s largest maximum-security prisons. According to local media, as of August, Cecot was housing 14,500 people, 36 per cent of its capacity of 40,000.

It has also become a favorite of US right-wing conservatives after rebranding the country as a ‘bitcoin-friendly surfing center’.

Rubio has also been pushing Latin American leaders to distance themselves from China, which has entered the region in recent years with massive infrastructure investments, including a mega-port in Peru.

The State Department said Monday that Rubio and Bukele ‘discussed strategies to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the hemisphere’ and that the two had a ‘highly successful meeting that will make both countries stronger, safer and more prosperous.’