U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said El Salvador’s president offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, including “dangerous” American criminals currently incarcerated.
President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said during a signing ceremony for an unrelated civil nuclear agreement with El Salvador’s foreign minister.
Bukele also added that El Salvador would “accept for deportation any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal from any nationality, be they MS-13 or Tren de Aragua, and house them in his jails.”
However, what has raised some eyebrows is Bukele’s statements about accepting American citizens.
“He’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents,” said Rubio.
Bukele confirmed his statements to Rubio on X, stating, “We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted US citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee.”
El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, is the country’s largest and newest prison, with a maximum capacity of 40,000 inmates.
Rubio’s announcement came during his visit to Central America as the U.S. Secretary of State. He was reportedly visiting El Salvador to press the government to do more, as the Trump administration demands countries do their part to assist with the immigration takedown.
Legal Challenges With Deporting ‘Violent’ American Criminals to El Salvador
Experts say any effort by the Trump administration to deport incarcerated U.S. nationals to another country would come with significant legal challenges.
“The US is absolutely prohibited from deporting US citizens, whether they are incarcerated or not,” Leti Volpp, a law professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in immigration law and citizenship theory, told CNN.
However, the legality issues didn’t stop people within Trump’s administration, including his allies, from praising the idea. Trump’s most vocal proponent, Elon Musk, called it a “great idea” on X.
“It is a bizarre and unprecedented proposal being made potentially between two authoritarian, populist, right-wing leaders seeking a transactional relationship,” Emerson College professor Mneesha Gellman, an international politics scholar, told CNN
.“It’s not rooted in any sort of legal provision and likely violates a number of international laws relating to the rights of migrants.”