In an agreement qualified by both parties as “unprecedented”, the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, accepted on Monday to receive in his megacárcel the undocumented migrants arrested for serious crimes in the United States and opened the door even to house prisoners of US nationality.
“No country has ever made a friendship offer like this,” the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, at the end of three hours of meeting with Bukele, who consolidates itself as the great regional ally of the new Donald Trump administration.
Rubio arrived this Monday to El Salvador as part of his Central American tour, the first one that he carries out as Secretary of State and with which he seeks to stop the migratory flows that are directed to the north.
The Megacárcel, available to the United States
One of its main objectives was to address with Bukele the possibility of closing an agreement, similar to the one in Trump’s first mandate (2017-2021), to consider El Salvador as a third safe country, which would allow the United States to deport There to migrants from other nationalities, such as Venezuelans.
The Salvadoran president received Rubio in his spectacular residence with a view to Lake Coatepeque, in the west of the country, in a clear sign of friendship and that the conversations were on the right track.
After the meeting, Rubio announced that El Salvador will accept the deportation of undocumented migrants of any nationality that commit serious crimes, and gave as an example to alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS13) or the Venezuelan band of the Train of Aragua.
And in an unusual gesture, Bukele even offered to house in his prisons of dangerous American prisoners, both those who have citizenship and those who have legal residence in the United States. Rubio described him as an “unprecedented immigration agreement and the most extraordinary of anywhere in the world.”
On the other hand, Bukele detailed in social networks that the pact consists of accepting the income “only of convict”, even with American nationality, in the famous maximum security prison of his country, called the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), where they comply with gang members.
According to the Salvadoran president, it is a kind of “subcontracting” of the prison, since a rate would be charged to the United States that would facilitate the “penitentiary system to be sustainable.”
Hours before, Bukele and Rubio went out to a balcony to observe the views of the Lake in front of the Manadatario residence and that was where, asked by the press, the Salvadoran President anticipated that he would have “unprecedented” agreement. “It is a much greater agreement that is not preceded in the history of relations, not only of the United States with El Salvador, but I think that with all of Latin America,” he added.
Bukele, Trump’s great ally
Bukele is, together with the Argentine Javier Milei, the Latin American president most related to Donald Trump and, in fact, he was the first president of the region to which the Republican called after being invested.
The Trump administration sees as an example the Bukele government security strategy, which has drastically reduced insecurity in the country with police and military hard measures criticized by human rights organizations.
The previous administration of Joe Biden criticized Bukele at the time to seek his re -election despite the constitutional prohibition, although then the relations relaxed.
The Salvadoran president explained this Monday before the press that he has never hidden his “sympathy” with Trump and, when he was cheered by someone who sailed along the lake, said laughing: “I have an 80 %approval.”
The tuning and the relaxed atmosphere demonstrated today was much greater than what emerged on Sunday of the meeting between Rubio with the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino.
That meeting was marked by Trump’s threats to recover control over the Panama Canal for the alleged Chinese influence on that way, despite the fact that this Central American country is also a fundamental partner for the United States in the immigration issue.
Rubio, the first Spanish Secretary of State in the history of the United States, will start from El Salvador on Tuesday to continue his tour of Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
