Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from US of any nationality

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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio left El Salvador on Tuesday with an agreement from that country's president to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, including violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.

President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said after meeting with Bukele at his lakeside country house outside San Salvador for several hours late Monday.

“We can send them, and he will put them in his jails,” Rubio said of migrants of all nationalities detained in the United States. “And, he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents."

Rubio was visiting El Salvador to press a friendly government to do more to meet President Donald Trump's demands for a major crackdown on immigration.

Bukele confirmed the offer in a post on X, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.” He said his country would accept only “convicted criminals” and would charge a fee that “would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire working with Trump to remake the federal government, responded on his X platform, “Great idea!!”

After Rubio spoke, a U.S. official said Trump's Republican administration had no current plans to try to deport American citizens but called Bukele's offer significant. The U.S. government cannot deport American citizens.

El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency since March 2022, when the country’s powerful street gangs went on a killing rampage. Bukele responded by suspending fundamental rights like access to lawyers, and authorities have arrested more than 83,000 people. And in 2023, Bukele opened a massive new prison with capacity for 40,000 gang members.

El Salvador, once one of the most dangerous countries in the world, closed last year with a record low 114 homicides, a newfound security that has propelled Bukele’s soaring popularity in the country of about 6 million residents.

Rubio arrived in San Salvador shortly after watching a U.S.-funded deportation flight with 43 migrants leave from Panama for Colombia. That came a day after Rubio delivered a warning to Panama that unless the government moved immediately to eliminate China's presence at the Panama Canal, the U.S. would act to do so.

Migration, though, was the main issue of the day, as it will be for the next stops on Rubio's five-nation Central American tour of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic after Panama and El Salvador.

Trump’s administration prioritizes stopping people from making the journey to the United States and has worked with regional countries to boost immigration enforcement on their borders as well as to accept deportees from the United States.

The agreement Rubio described for El Salvador to accept foreign nationals arrested in the United States for violating U.S. immigration laws is known as a “safe third country” agreement. Officials have suggested this might be an option for Venezuelan gang members convicted of crimes in the United States should Venezuela refuse to accept them, but Rubio said Bukele's offer was for detainees of any nationality.

After meeting with Bukele, Rubio signed a memorandum of understanding with his Salvadoran counterpart to advance U.S.-El Salvador civil nuclear cooperation. The document could lead to a more formal deal on cooperation in nuclear power and medicine that the U.S. has with numerous countries.