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A day after President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador offered<\/a> to imprison convicted criminals from the United States, including U.S. citizens, the question of whether such a plan could actually be accepted and implemented was still unanswered.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stopped in El Salvador while visiting Central America<\/a> this week, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would have to \u201cstudy\u201d the offer from Mr. Bukele to jail convicts<\/a> from the United States, for a fee. \u201cBut it\u2019s a very generous offer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. Rubio himself said it was unclear if the United States could legally send convicts, including Americans, to a foreign prison.<\/p>\n But the proposal has drawn attention to the prisons that Mr. Bukele has used in recent years to cripple the gangs that once ran rampant in El Salvador. They have become symbols of his strength and popularity, including with Mr. Trump \u2014 even as human rights groups say the crowded prisons are holding pens for tens of thousands of people rounded up in arrests that have ensnared innocents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Analysts say it is unlikely such a plan would hold up in court, particularly where it concerns U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n But whether or not Mr. Bukele\u2019s offer is ever actually acted on, analysts said it serves as a way for both nations\u2019 governments to project a shared vision of a tough approach to lawbreakers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe announcement is a P.R. win,\u201d said Gustavo Flores-Mac\u00edas, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell University who specializes in Latin America. It allows Mr. Bukele to show he is all-in for Mr. Trump, and bolsters the Trump administration, \u201cwhich is looking to dissuade undocumented migration by raising the stakes if apprehended.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And yet, whatever its chances of being out into practice, Mr. Bukele\u2019s announcement immediately sparked concern among human rights groups in the United States and beyond, which warned that the Bukele administration\u2019s anti-gang crusade has come at the expense of human rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhile the gangs no longer constitute a threat, a system of terror and repression has emerged in the country,\u201d said Ana Mar\u00eda M\u00e9ndez Dard\u00f3n, the Central America director at the Washington Office for Latin America, a nonprofit human rights group.<\/p>\n At a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in July 2024, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, El Salvador\u2019s foreign minister, said the country is \u201cmeeting all international standards\u201d for prisoners and added that reports of human rights violations are \u201cbaseless accusations and far from our reality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n El Salvador was once known as the hemisphere\u2019s murder capital \u2014 with one of the highest homicide rates anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n But in 2022, Mr. Bukele declared a state of emergency<\/a> to quell gang violence, and sent the military into the streets, arresting tens of thousands of people around the country, accusing them of gang ties or other crimes. More than 25,000 were imprisoned in the first weeks of Mr. Bukele\u2019s crackdown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nearly three years later, the state of emergency has yet to be lifted.<\/p>\n In that time, the nation has undergone a remarkable transformation. Homicides have sharply decreased<\/a>, and extortion payments that gangs demanded from businesses and residents also declined.<\/p>\n As a reminder of the government\u2019s zero tolerance, tough-on-crime policies, photos and videos are often circulated that show scores of inmates, sometimes shirtless and clad only in boxers, bending over with their hands on their shaven heads.<\/p>\n Mr. Bukele earned adulation from leaders in the region and beyond, and most Salvadorans<\/a> support him, not in spite of his strongman tactics but because of them.<\/p>\n In November, his approval rating was 91 percent, according to a CID Gallup poll, one of the highest in the world for a world leader \u2014 although support for him dwindled recently<\/a> after his government reversed a landmark mining ban.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Still, Mr. Bukele\u2019s approach eroded civil rights in the country, human rights experts say: Mass arbitrary arrests, extreme overcrowding at prisons, reports of torture and at least 261 prison deaths<\/a> between 2022 and 2024 were documented by several groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Bukele\u2019s prisons are not typical penitentiaries. El Salvador\u2019s gangs once used jails as operational hubs to issue orders, extort businesses on the outside and recruit new members \u2014 something also seen inside prisons across Latin America<\/a>.<\/p>\n That no longer seems to happen \u201cbecause of the extreme measures taken to control prisoners,\u201d according to a 2023 report<\/a> by Insight Crime, an organized-crime research group.<\/p>\n The star of Mr. Bukele\u2019s strategy is his so-called mega prison: the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, a hulking detention center that opened in 2023 an hour outside the country\u2019s capital, San Salvador. The facility is big enough to hold up to 40,000 inmates, some of them as young as 12.<\/p>\n The vast majority of the 85,000 Salvadorans apprehended under the 2022 state of emergency \u2014 which allows for mass arrests with no due process \u2014 have essentially disappeared into the prison system, where many have been held for years without trial and without their families even knowing if they are alive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While the imposing CECOT has garnered international attention, most prisoners are held in other, smaller facilities where \u201cthey have been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment,\u201d said Noah Bullock, the executive director of the Salvadoran advocacy group Cristosal, which has interviewed hundreds of detainees arrested under the state of emergency.<\/p>\n Cristosal and Human Rights Watch have reported that inmates were being tortured<\/a> and deprived of food. Many inmates\u2019 fates<\/a> were decided in mass trials with judges whose identities were kept secret.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The State Department said<\/a> in a statement that Mr. Bukele offered to take undocumented migrants from any country, not just El Salvador, who have been convicted of crimes, including members of the MS-13 and the Tren de Aragua<\/a> gangs.<\/p>\n And in what the State Department called \u201can extraordinary gesture, never before extended by any country,\u201d it said Mr. Bukele had offered to house \u201cdangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.\u201d Analysts say that such a move is likely to be challenged, even if it were to be embraced by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI do not think that it will stand up in the courts,\u201d Mneesha Gellman, an associate professor of political science at Emerson College, said, citing multiple domestic and international laws that govern the treatment of both undocumented people in the United States and U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n However, the two governments could reach an agreement that would allow the United States to deport large numbers of people to El Salvador, including non-Salvadorans, Ms. Gellman said. The United States is eager to find places to deport migrants whose countries do not accept regular U.S. deportation flights, such as Cubans and Nicaraguans.<\/p>\n Whether in or out of prisons, migrants would find themselves extremely vulnerable in El Salvador.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would not have citizens\u2019 rights in that country,\u201d Ms. Gellman said, noting that migrants in El Salvador have reported experiencing abuses at the hands of criminal groups as well as state actors, such as the police and the military.<\/p>\n In 2019, El Salvador signed an agreement<\/a> with the first Trump administration to receive non-Salvadoran migrants who had been detained in the United States after U.S. officials cut off some aid to El Salvador, accusing<\/a> the country of not doing enough to curb illegal migration.<\/p>\n It also agreed to process asylum requests to keep migrants from heading north to the United States.<\/p>\n Known as a \u201csafe third country\u201d agreement, the deal was never implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic and was eventually terminated by the Biden administration. Mr. Bukele referred to it on Monday, saying his new proposal was \u201cmore important and of a much broader scope than the agreements made in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Bukele has appeared eager to strengthen his ties to the Trump administration, and the latest offer \u201cclearly helps to consolidate this relationship between the MAGA world and El Salvador,\u201d said Manuel Mel\u00e9ndez S\u00e1nchez, a Salvadoran political scientist and researcher at Harvard University.<\/p>\n But relations between the two government have not always been close.<\/p>\n In 2022, Mr. Rubio criticized Mr. Bukele during a Senate hearing<\/a>, accusing him of \u201cvery openly\u201d mocking U.S. institutions.<\/p>\nWhat has Bukele\u2019s approach to crime looked like?<\/h2>\n
How has Bukele used the prison system?<\/h2>\n
Who could end up in Bukele\u2019s prisons?<\/h2>\n
Is there any precedent for El Salvador\u2019s offer?<\/h2>\n
What could Bukele get out of this deal?<\/h2>\n