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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has said the Central American country could take convicted prisoners from the US in exchange for a fee.
During a visit by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, Bukele on Monday agreed to take El Salvadoran gang members as well as “violent illegal immigrants . . . from any country”, the US state department said in a statement.
He also said El Salvador could take in American citizens and legal residents convicted of crimes and house them in maximum security prisons, which the state department called “an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country”, though it was not clear if Washington would accept the offer.
“We have offered the [US] the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” Bukele wrote on social media platform X. “The fee would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
Rubio has embarked on his first international trip as secretary of state to Central America as he seeks to broker deals to support US President Donald Trump’s vow to clamp down on illegal immigration.
Trump has pressured Latin American countries, including Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, to accept immigrants expelled from the US, and has proposed holding those with criminal records at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which previously detained high-profile terrorism suspects.
The US reported record arrivals at its southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency, but numbers have fallen dramatically in the past few months.
Bukele, an authoritarian who has styled himself as the “CEO of El Salvador”, enjoys some of the highest approval ratings in the region, in part after he slashed homicide rates by locking up more than 2 per cent of the adult population. He has also become a favourite of the US right wing after rebranding the country a bitcoin-friendly surf destination.
Many of the suspected gang members he has detained are awaiting trial and housed in the notorious Centre for the Confinement of Terrorists (Cecot), one of the world’s largest maximum security prisons. As of August, Cecot was holding 14,500 people, 36 per cent of its capacity of 40,000, according to local media.
Rubio has also been pushing Latin American leaders to shun China, which has made inroads in the region in recent years with high-profile infrastructure investments, including a mega-port in Peru.
During the top US diplomat’s visit to Panama last week, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino announced the country’s withdrawal from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature foreign development policy. Trump has accused Panama of allowing China to exert undue influence over its canal, a crucial trade corridor.
The state department on Monday said Rubio had “raised strategies to counter the influence of the Chinese Communist party in the hemisphere” with Bukele, adding that the two held “a tremendously successful meeting that will make both countries stronger, safer and more prosperous”.
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