El Salvador has agreed to accommodate violent American criminals and receive deportees of a nationality, in an unprecedented deal with the Trump government that critics and law groups have alerted.
The American State Secretary Marco Rubio announced the agreement on Monday after the meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, while visiting various Midden -American countries to help the White House agenda about migration ahead.
“In an act of extraordinary friendship with our country … (El Salvador) has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migration agreement all over the world,” Rubio told reporters.
The American State Secretary Marco Rubio meets President Nayib Bukele in his home on Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador, Monday 3 February 2025. – Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The country will continue to accept Salvadoran deportees who have entered the US illegally, he said. It will also “accept every illegal alien in the United States for deportation that is a criminal of a nationality, whether they are MS-13 or Tren the Aragua and house them in his prisons,” he said to two notorious transnational gangs With members with members with members with members of El Salvador and Venezuela.
Moreover, Bukele “offered to house dangerous American criminals in custody in our country in his prisons, including those of American citizenship and legal inhabitants,” said Rubio.
Bukele confirmed the agreement on X and said in a function: “We are prepared to engage only convicted criminals (including convicted American citizens) in our mega prison (Cecot) in exchange for compensation.”
“The reimbursement would be relatively low for the US, but important to us, making our entire prison system sustainable,” he added.
Prior to the announcement, critics had warned that such a plan could be part of democratic relapse.
“The US in essence proposes to send people to a country that is not the country of origin, nor the country is that they have passed on,” said Mneesha Gellman, an international political scholar and professor at Emerson College.
“It is a bizarre and unprecedented proposal that may be made between two authoritarian, populist, right -wing leaders who are looking for a transactional relationship,” Gellman told CNN. “It is not rooted in any form of legal provision and probably violates a number of international laws with regard to the rights of migrants.”
Prisoners in Cecot, El Salvador's Terrorism Insurance of terrorism, during an exclusive CNN visit in 2024. – Evelio Contreras/CNN
CNN has contacted the El Salvadoran officials for more information.
One of the most striking aspects of the deal is that Salvadorean law does not distinguish itself between alleged gang members and people who are guilty of a crime. Under the draconian emergency state that has ruled the Midden -American country since 2022, the authorities can easily hold on to the suspicion of a member of a gang.
Bukele has yielded a high detention rate such as a recipe for safety – El Salvador now has the highest percentage in the world – but human rights organizations such as Amnesty International believe that many of the more than 80,000 people who are caught under the state of emergency are innocent.
This is a developing story.
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