Trump wants El Salvador to build more prisons to jail Americans

Eric Martin, Bloomberg News on Apr 14, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that he asked his counterpart Nayib Bukele if El Salvador could build more prisons to jail as many American criminals as possible — U.S. citizens included.

Seated next to President Bukele in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said the U.S. could help the Central American nation add more prisons, praising them as “great facilities.”

Bukele has one of the highest domestic approval ratings among world leaders thanks to his aggressive policing and mass incarceration efforts. He routinely shares videos on social media from the nation’s mega-prison Cecot, which has the capacity to hold 40,000 inmates.

“They don’t play games,” Trump said.

In the meeting, Bukele boasted that he has transformed El Salvador from the “murder capital of the world” to the safest country in the hemisphere, with low crime rates.

El Salvador has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, more than triple that of the U.S. The nation’s prison population soared and its homicide rate plunged after Bukele used a state of emergency to round up tens of thousands of suspected gang members. Lower crime rates remain his signature achievement since taking office in 2019.

Human rights groups have criticized Bukele’s harsh policies for neglecting due process. Some families say innocent loved ones have been imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Hundreds of inmates have died in the overcrowded prisons, according to rights groups.

Trump said over the weekend that he’s not concerned about human rights abuses at the Salvadoran jails, which last month received more than 200 migrants deported form the U.S.

Still, legal analysts have raised questions about the legality of sending U.S. citizens to prisons abroad.

“I don’t know what the laws are, we always have to obey the laws,” Trump said. “But we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.”

Bukele first made the extraordinary offer to accept convicted criminals of any nationality during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in early February.

Bukele on Monday also said that a Maryland man deported to his country by Trump’s administration won’t be returned, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has called for the administration to facilitate his release.