Another day, another illegal deal? Can the USA ship incarcerated citizens off to foreign prisons? trump ready to pay El Salvador to house US citizens in prisons in El Salvador. also going to ship illegal immigrant prisoners to El Salvador for them to house El Salvador agrees to "unprecedented" migrant deal, Marco Rubio says President Donald Trump earlier this month threatened tariffs against Colombia for not accepting deportation flights from the United States. The move prompted the U.S. State Department to suspend consular services in Bogotá and Customs and Border Protection to impose new inspection protocols on Colombian exports. The threat ultimately led to Colombia agreeing to accept migrants as long as they were not flown back to the country on military aircrafts. Newsweek reached out to the State Department via online form and the Consulate of El Salvador via email on Monday night. On Monday night, Rubio announced that El Salvador had agreed to accept not only deportees from other countries but also "do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they're U.S. citizens or legal residents," according to The State Department also posted about the migratory agreement on their website. Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in part, "Multiple agreements were struck to fight the waves of illegal mass migration currently destabilizing the entire region. President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully. He also promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country." And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents. Secretary Rubio and President Bukele concluded a civil nuclear cooperation MOU, which was signed by the Secretary and Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco hours later," Bruce said. President Nayib Bukele on X: "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. The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable."
We allowed a sitting President to attempt to not transfer power. Why start enforcing the law with DOGE? Errrr, I mean this.
Apparently shipping prisoners to El Salvador will be less costly than paying private prison operators to house US prisoners not to mention that prisoners being housed in El Salvador would be much less likely to use legal remedies to challenge the conditions of their incarceration.
I dont know much about the politics there, but I'm curious how "import all the most violent people" plays there. Perhaps they know we let death squads do their thing there before, and we are always willing to help friendly dictators. What's in it for them to be the prison country?
The current president of El Salvador built a large facility to house gang members and has been conducting sweeps over last year. Apparently, the practice has significantly reduced crime although innocent Salvadorians have also been swept up and conditions in the prison are horrendous by US standards which aren't exactly humane in the first place. https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-us-rubio-prison-de912f6a8199aaa7c8490585dcaa3b87 Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in the town of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital. Able to hold 40,000 inmates, the CECOT is made up of eight sprawling pavilions. Its cells hold 65 to 70 prisoners each. They do not receive visits. There are no programs preparing them to return to society after their sentences, no workshops or educational programs. They are never allowed outside.
Well that I knew, their solution to their gang problem (which started in American prisons and was deported to them) was simply to become the country with largest prison population per capita (just beating out the United States) and detain people who even vaguely look like they might be in a gang. But since MS13 started in prisons, I dont know what this accomplishes ultimately, other than blackholing people. I'm sure less shootings is popular, but I dont know how popular doing the dirty work of the US is, especially taking in people that arent Salvadoran citizens.
