‘Extraordinary friendship’: Marco Rubio Welcomes Offer From El Salvador To Take in Convicts From American Jails

Secretary of State Rubio is welcoming an invitation from El Salvador to take in convicts from American jails and house them for a “relatively low” fee. “We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said. The “mega jail” in El Salvador was built in 2023 and can house 40,000 inmates. The president said the fee for the U.S. would be “relatively low” but “significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”Mr. Rubio welcomed the offer, saying “In an act of extraordinary friendship to our country El Salvador has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”El Salvador, he continued, will “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.”Mr. Rubio’s comments came after he met with Bukele on his first foreign trip, with El Salvador being the second stop. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order labelling the two criminal gangs as foreign terror groups. The executive order states that their “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.”But deporting American citizens to another country could face legal backlash, especially as El Salvador has been criticized for human rights abuses in its jails. Bukele’s major crackdown on gangs in El Salvador has, however, been praised by many El Salvadorans whose country for years was among the most dangerous and violent in the world before he took office in 2019. The looming deal between El Salvador and the U.S. is seen as the latest move by Trump to keep his promise of restoring order and deporting illegal immigrants.

‘Extraordinary friendship’: Marco Rubio Welcomes Offer From El Salvador To Take in Convicts From American Jails

‘Extraordinary friendship’: Marco Rubio Welcomes Offer From El Salvador To Take in Convicts From American Jails

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