Rubio Bombshell: El Salvador Willing to Jail Our Worst Criminals in Their 40,000 Super Prison

It’s the age-old question Democrats love to pose to Republicans when they want to start deporting illegal aliens and cracking down on criminals: Sounds great, but where are you going to detain them while they’re being processed or incarcerated?

Alas, that cocksure line from the obstructionist left has an answer they won’t like: in Nayib Bukele’s super-prison in El Salvador. Seriously.

On Monday, amid the new administration’s crackdown on the illegal immigration and criminal cartel crisis that festered under President Joe Biden’s administration, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that, after a meeting with Bukele — a noted law-and-order stickler — the Salvadorian leader had agreed to “house violent U.S. criminals and receive deportees of any nationality,” according to CNN.

“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,” Rubio said to the media.

“Any … illegal immigrant in the United States who’s a dangerous criminal — MS-13, Tren de Aragua, whatever it may be — he has offered his jails, so we can send them, and he will put them in his jails,” he added, according to Reuters.

The move comes as Rubio makes his first trip abroad to Latin America, trying to secure “third country” agreements where American allies will accept deportees that their home countries have turned away.

It’s unclear which countries will cause problems, although Cuba and Venezuela seem to be the two most obvious issues. (Trump, however, has indicated that Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro has indicated he will accept Venezuelan citizens deported from the United States.)

Colombia, too, made a scene about not taking back its deportees — until, of course, President Donald Trump made some very public threats of sanctions, which seemed to fix that in a hurry.

Bukele acknowledged El Salvador’s offer to the Trump administration.

“We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison… in exchange for a fee,” Bukele said on social media, referring to his mega-prison called CECOT.

The prison can hold up to 40,000 people; France24 reported that 15,000 prisoners were currently being held there, meaning there’s ample room.

“The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable,” Bukele wrote.

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… pic.twitter.com/HTNwtp35Aq

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 4, 2025

The proposed arrangement has raised two contentions from the left: one legal, the other ethical. Both are spurious.

First, there’s the matter of whether or not U.S. citizens, residents, or those who have committed crimes here can be held or incarcerated in other countries.

“The U.S. is absolutely prohibited from deporting U.S. citizens, whether they are incarcerated or not,” UC Berkeley law professor Leti Volpp told CNN. In addition, Emerson College professor Mneesha Gellman said the administration was “essentially proposing to send people to a country that is not the country of origin nor is it necessarily the country that they passed through.”

“It is a bizarre and unprecedented proposal being made potentially between two authoritarian, populist, right wing leaders seeking a transactional relationship,” said the academic, who specializes in international politics. “It’s not rooted in any sort of legal provision and likely violates a number of international laws relating to the rights of migrants.”

In terms of U.S. law, what they are likely referring to is 18 U.S. Code § 3621: “A person who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment … shall be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons until the expiration of the term imposed, or until earlier released for satisfactory behavior,” and they shall be, “to the extent practicable,” housed close to their place of residence.

However, that part of U.S. code also noted that this is subject to a number of things — including “bed availability, the prisoner’s security designation … the nature and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics of the prisoner,” and any number of factors.

Especially given the fact this likely has to do with a crackdown on illegal immigrants or non-citizens who aren’t in compliance with the law, this part probably won’t be as much of a concern as the media is making it; I doubt Rubio wants to test outsourcing the incarceration of American citizens, but it’s a legal quandary on the table for the first time I can recall. Also, there’s certainly a discussion to be had about sending our country’s most vicious gang members, murderers, and repeat offenders to a cost-effective — if perhaps severe and uncompromising — mega-prison somewhere else.

That brings us to the ethical concern: Namely, Bukele definitely doesn’t exactly run a series of Club Fed clones when it comes to El Salvador’s penal system. There’s a reason the one-time gang-murder capital of Central America is now safer than Canada, and it’s not due to airy-fairy community policing programs.

“The Salvadoran president has launched an unflinching security crackdown in his country, arresting more than 80,000 people, and bringing the number of homicides down sharply,” Reuters noted. “His policies are credited by Washington with reducing the number of Salvadorans seeking to enter the U.S. illegally.”

They’re also noted by human rights activists as being harsh. OK, then: Why won’t the countries that these individuals are citizens of repatriate them? The onus is on them, not us. If they want to play political hardball with the lives of their own citizens in the hope they can illegally stay in another country, where they aren’t a burden or a nuisance, they’re the ones who bear the blame when their own people get hit by a fastball.

Any nation who is genuinely concerned for these migrants — who, let’s face it, will likely be the ones populating El Salvador’s mega-prison under Bukele’s offer — can end the problem immediately: comply with deportations. Simple.

Two choices: repatriation or a not-quite-vacation in El Salvador. And hopefully, after a few more “third country” agreements, we’ll have even more options that don’t involve trying the same old catch-and-release nonsense. We’re not playing the endless delay game again. We’re not playing “children in cages” emotional blackmail. We’re not working on “root causes.” We’re done with all that. The law is the law. America voted to enforce it, and rest assured this is just the beginning of undoing the damage wrought by the immigration crisis. Bon voyage, one way or another.

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