Trump wants to send ‘dangerous’ Americans and deportees to this prison in El Salvador

US President Donald Trump is exploring a plan to send “dangerous” Americans and deportees to a grim prison in El Salvador.

Donald Trump has endorsed a plan to send “dangerous” Americans and deportees to a megaprison in El Salvador.

The plan was cooked up by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele when he met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday.

Mr Bukele offered the use of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum-security prison, Latin America’s largest, to house American citizens, despite clear legal issues.

CECOT has been described as a “hell hole”. Picture: Getty Images

Inmates wait as 2000 detainees are moved to megaprison CECOT on June 11, 2024 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Picture: Getty Images

President Nayib Bukele wrote 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 US citizens) into our megaprison (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.”

Mr Rubio responded: “... In an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including US citizens and legal residents.”

Mr Trump told reporters he supported the idea, citing savings and deterrence as factors.

“If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” he said in the Oval Office.

“It’s no different than our prison system, except it would be a lot less expensive, and it would be a great deterrent,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Rubio said Tuesday that the Trump administration would review the proposal but acknowledged legal issues.

“We’ll have to study it on our end. There are obviously legalities involved,” Mr Rubio told reporters a day afterwards in Costa Rica.

“We have a constitution, we have all sorts of things, but it’s a very generous offer,” Mr Rubio said.

The US Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishment” and promises due process.

There is little precedent in modern times for a democratic country to send its own citizens to foreign prisons.

Inmates are crammed into their cells for 23-and-a-half hours a day. On rare occasions they are allowed to exercise. Picture: Getty Images

The prison is packed with gang members. Picture: Getty Images

Prisoners crammed into cells

CECOT is home to hardened Salvadoran criminals and has been described as a “hell hole”.

According to the New York Post, it lies 75km southeast of the capital city, with gangbangers from MS-13 and rival Barrio 18 held inside its walls.

The prison boasts wide dining halls, break rooms, a gym, and a plethora of board games, but all those amenities are reserved for the nearly 2,000 guards patrolling the facility.

The inmates are instead crammed into their cells for 23-and-a-half hours a day, with each cell holding 65 to 70 prisoners. Rival gang members are often kept in the same cells.

The prisoners are only allowed out of the cells to exercise for 30 minutes every day inside the hallways, or to attend court hearings via video from a prison room.

Inmates face harsh conditions in CECOT. Picture: Getty Images

Since president Bukele announced a state of exception in March 2022, over 80,000 suspected gang members have been arrested. Picture: Getty Images

Gang members seen in a cell at the CECOT, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. Picture: Getty Images

Inmates are packed into the megaprison. Picture: Getty Images

The inmates shower from a large basin inside their cells, and they collect water from a large plastic barrel to drink from. A steel walkway above the cells and surveillance cameras ensure the prisoners are watched 24/7.

Salvadoran President Bukele’s government prohibits meat at CECOT, so the prisoners are fed only beans and pasta. The Due Process of Law Foundation, which campaigns for human rights in Latin America, has said the amount of food served at the prison is completely inadequate.

Despite Bukele’s claims that the jail is tightly managed, local and international human rights groups also say violence is all too common at the prison, whether at the hands of guards or the inmates themselves.

‘They could keep them’

Mr Bukele said that El Salvador wanted to give the United States a chance to “outsource part of its prison system.”

He said he would negotiate payment, which would decrease costs for the United States but help fund El Salvador’s own mass incarceration.

Mr Trump said that shipping criminals to El Salvador would be “a very small fee compared to what we pay to private prisons.”

“Frankly, they could keep them, because these people are never going to be any good,” Mr Trump said.

It would be a sharp break with historical practice for the United States not to take back its own citizens.

The United States under successive administrations has pushed European allies to take back their citizens who fought for the Islamic State extremist group, in hopes of ending long-term imprisonment in Syria.

Mr Trump has sought to end the principle that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, which is enshrined in the Constitution. Most European nations have more leeway in revoking citizenship.

Mr Bukele has carried a sweeping crackdown on crime that includes rounding up people without warrants.

He last year opened CECOT, where he has now offered to jail Americans.

Designed to house 40,000 inmates, the vast prison lies behind huge concrete walls on the edge of a jungle, with inmates allowed out of their cells only for 30 minutes a day of exercise and for virtual court appointments.

Mr Bukele has faced criticism from human rights groups but enjoys sky-high approval ratings from a public grateful for the sharp reduction of crime in what was once one of the world’s most violent countries.

Mr Bukele, who has courted American conservatives, has offered to jail not just Americans but nationals from other countries, along with Salvadorans.

Mr Trump quickly after taking office stripped roughly 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States of protection from deportation.

Mr Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden had refused to deport them due to the security and economic crises in Venezuela, led by leftist Nicolas Maduro.

Some 232,000 Salvadorans enjoy similar protections in the United States which Trump has not touched.

The Trump administration has also begun to fly detained migrants to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.