Q24N – US President Donald Trump likes the idea put forward by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele of holding U.S. criminals in prison in exchange for money.
Trump confirmed that his government is studying the possibility of sending those convicted in “the most serious cases” to serve their time in prison in foreign countries, after Bukele offered his own to receive both the irregular immigrants whom Trump wants to deport and convicts, including U.S. citizens.
Bukele’s offer came during a visit to his country on Monday by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who described it as “the most extraordinary and unprecedented immigration agreement in the entire world.”
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But sending US citizens to serve their sentences outside the United States raises legal questions, as Trump himself implicitly acknowledged.
“I’m just saying that if we have the right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” the president said before admitting: “I don’t know if we do or not; we’re studying it right now, but we could reach agreements to get those animals out of the United States.”
During Rubio’s visit to El Salvador, it was already clear that the Trump administration had welcomed the offer. “We can send them and they put them in their prisons,” Rubio said, satisfied, referring to illegal immigrants.
But the surprise came when Rubio explained that Bukele “has also offered to do the same with dangerous criminals currently detained and serving their sentences in the United States, even if they are American citizens or legal residents.”
The Salvadoran leader confirmed that he had “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.”
He clarified that El Salvador would be “willing to accommodate only convicted criminals” and that his government would do so “in exchange for a fee.”
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Bukele also revealed where he would house deportees from the United States: “our mega-prison.”
The mega-prison, also known as Cecot (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo) – short for Terrorism Confinement Center, has become the flag that Bukele flies as a symbol of the success of his hardline policy against crime.
The maximum-security prison, one of the largest in Latin America, opened its doors in January 2023 and can hold 40,000 inmates, according to Salvadoran government figures.
Dozens of prisoners with their hands behind their necks and bare torsos in El Salvador’s mega-prison.
There, inmates are confined to windowless cells, sleeping on metal bunk beds and constantly watched by armed guards.
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BBC News Mundo’s Leire Ventas, who was allowed an official tour of the facility last year after the BBC repeatedly requested access, described how temperatures in the cells reached 35°C.
Access to the prison is very restricted and journalists have only been able to enter on visits organised and carefully monitored by the authorities.
The number of inmates per cell is unclear. Some human rights groups put the figure at 80 prisoners, while others say it can reach more than 150.
When our reporter asked him what the maximum capacity was, the prison director replied “where 10 people fit, 20 fit”.
Prisoners are locked inside their cells 24 hours a day. They can only go out for 30 minutes to a windowless corridor for group exercise sessions.
The design of the prison is no coincidence.
After a particularly bloody weekend in 2022 in which more than 70 people died on the streets of El Salvador, President Bukele wrote on social media: “Message to the gangs: for your actions, your boys will not be able to see a ray of sunshine.”
Construction of the mega-prison began shortly after.
Conditions in the prison and the treatment of inmates have come under harsh criticism from human rights groups.
Miguel Sarre, a former member of the United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture, has described it as a “pit of concrete and steel.”
So could the Trump administration send U.S. citizens there?
Legal protections
Any attempt to deport U.S. citizens or people legally residing in the U.S. to a foreign prison appears set to be challenged in court.
U.S. citizens born in the U.S. enjoy legal protection from deportation.
However, there are some cases where naturalized citizens – those who were not born in the country and obtained U.S. citizenship through a legal process – can lose it.
This usually happens when it is proven that the person in question committed fraud to obtain citizenship.
Alex Cuic, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that naturalized U.S. citizens suspected of having ties to criminal gangs or organizations listed as terrorists by the U.S. government, such as the Tren de Aragua or the Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13, could also, in theory, lose their citizenship.
“If you had gang ties and never revealed them, they could use that as a reason to denaturalize you.”
Once a person has been “denaturalized,” they risk being deported.
Cuic noted that “citizenship is not something that is definitely forever if you are naturalized,” but any such move would have to be preceded by a “formal judicial process” in a federal court.
She stressed, however, that she had “never heard” of cases of native-born U.S. citizens being sent abroad to serve prison sentences for crimes committed and prosecuted in the U.S.
Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she had “never heard of such an idea.”
While acknowledging that there were several scenarios in which naturalized U.S. citizens could lose their citizenship, she said that “you cannot denaturalize a U.S.-born citizen.”
The situation for legal permanent residents in the United States is more precarious than that of American citizens.
They can be deported if they violate certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including committing drug-related crimes, violent crimes, or crimes such as theft, fraud, or assault.
Like naturalized citizens, they can also be deported if they obtained their residency through fraud.
Legal permanent residents who are involved in terrorism, espionage, or any activity that threatens the national interest of the United States could also be at risk of deportation.
This last point takes on importance in light of the executive order that President Trump issued on the day of his inauguration in which he designated drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Two criminal organizations named in the executive order, Tren de Aragua and MS-13, were also mentioned last week by Trump’s special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone.
Speaking about Marco Rubio’s trip to El Salvador, Claver-Carone praised how Bukele had dealt with MS-13 — a gang deeply rooted in El Salvador that has long terrorized its citizens — and said the Salvadoran president could offer answers on how to deal with the Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang with origins in Venezuela.
Claver-Carone also suggested that Venezuelan gang members would rather return home than be held in a Salvadoran jail.
“I bet they’ll want to go back to Venezuela rather than deal with the Mara prisons in El Salvador,” he said of the Tren de Aragua members.
Marco Rubio also seemed to emphasize that the Trump administration would want to send members of these two notorious gangs to El Salvador first and foremost.
However, it’s unclear who, or even if anyone, will be sent from the United States to El Salvador’s mega-prison.
What is certain is that, with his “unprecedented offer of friendship,” Bukele has won Trump’s favor at a time when relations between the United States and its neighbors are shaken by the American president’s threats to impose tariffs on their products.
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