Trump and Marco Rubio may soon put a penal colony in El Salvador.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Rubio and El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced they’d reached an agreement to “outsource” U.S. prisoners to El Salvador’s mega-prison.
“We can send them, and he will put them in his jails,” Rubio said in regard to foreign nationals detained for violating U.S. immigration laws. “And he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States, even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents.” The agreement was initially supposed to cover alleged gang members.
“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” Bukele wrote on X. “We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
While some cheered the move, others reacted with a mix of shock and horror. Salvadoran opposition party member Manuel Flores stated that El Salvador housing U.S. prisoners would show that the country is America’s “backyard to dump the garbage.”
“Bukele is an all-time supervillain. We haven’t had a comprador like this since Chiang Kai-Shek,” criminology lecturer Emmy Rākete wrote on X. “Turning your country into a private black site torture-for-profit operation is a world-historical kind of evil.”
El Salvador’s prisons have been noted for sweeping human rights violations, incarcerated labor, and inhumane conditions.
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