Image source, Courtesy of the presidential house of El Salvador
- Author, Drafting
- Author’s title, BBC News World
“An unprecedented agreement, the most extraordinary in the world.”
This was described by the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the migration agreement reached with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, this Monday during the visit to the country as part of his tour of Central America.
El Salvador agreed to receive deportees from other nationalities, Rubio reported.
“And he also offered to do the same with dangerous criminals who are currently in custody and fulfilling their sentence in the United States, although they are US citizens or legal residents,” added the head of US diplomacy after having met for three hours With the president in his residence in Lake Coatepeque, on the outskirts of San Salvador.
Bukele signed him in a shared English message on social network X.
“We have offered the US the opportunity to outsource parts of your penitentiary system,” he explained in the publication.
“We are willing to accept only prisoners (including convicted American citizens) in our megaprision (CECOT) in exchange for a rate,” he clarified, referring to the prison that he opened two years ago for alleged members of the MS-13 and neighborhood 18 , the two most powerful gangs in the region.
Considered the largest in Latin America, it was published as designed to house 40,000 detainees, but it is estimated that today there are about 15,000.
“The rate would be relatively low for the US, but significant for us, which would make our entire penitentiary system sustainable.”
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It was not clear if the Trump administration is considering the possibility of sending American citizens imprisoned to El Salvador – no one what mechanism would he want to want to do it – but Rubio said that his country is “incredibly grateful” for the offer and that he already He mentioned the US President
“No country has ever made a friendship offer like this,” he added.
Who immediately answered Bukele’s message in X was Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla who is helping Trump reform the federal government. “Great idea!” He exclaimed.
The intention to reach an agreement in migratory issues had already advanced by Mauricio Claver-Carone, the special envoy of the State Department for Latin America, in a call with media on Friday.
After describing Bukele as “the most consistent president of the region” and “key ally” of the Trump administration, Claver-Carone said they would try to relive a similar agreement signed in 2019 but with “a greater scope” and so that Included alleged members of the Aragua Train, a criminal organization born in a Venezuelan prison.
The spokeswoman for the US Department of State, Tammy Bruce, clarified on Monday that El Salvador promised to accept “violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Gang Train of Aragua, but also illegal criminal migrants of any country.”
In 2019, under the Asylum Cooperation Agreement (ACA), El Salvador agreed to become a “third safe country” and thus receive deportees who had pending asylum processes, to wait for the resolution in Salvadoran territory.
He did it after officials of the Trump’s first government eliminated part of the aid addressed to the Central American nation, after accusing her not to do enough to curb irregular migration. But the agreement never entered into force and was terminated by the Biden government in 2021.
Impulse to nuclear energy
The governments of El Salvador and the US not only arrived on Monday in migratory issues.
Washington also promised to boost El Salvador in the development of nuclear energy.
He did it through the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Civil Cooperation (NCMOU), a pact with which it is sought, said Rubio, that El Salvador is a country “where all technologies, all industries, all promises of this new century can be found. “
The document says that both nations “reaffirmed their commitment to the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty and the promotion of peaceful and responsible civil nuclear cooperation.”
And also that the agreement includes, in addition to the support in the development of nuclear infrastructure, “the strengthening of regulatory and scientific capacities” and the promotion of joint projects in research and development.
Image source, Getty images
This is “a significant advance in bilateral relations, as well as in the promotion of new opportunities in the energy sector for both nations,” concludes the document.
Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco, who was responsible for signing the agreement of understanding, described it as “one more strategy” of President Bukele to “give energy 24 hours a day at a competitive price without depending on geopolitics nor of oil prices. “
Close relationship
Already before Rubio’s visit, El Salvador had established a somewhat close relationship with the United States government.
Bukele has long been admiration for Trump’s surroundings and related figures. Not for nothing was, like Argentine President Javier Milei, one of the star guests of the latest edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held in February 2024.
And in a phone call in the same week that the presidency assumed, Trump praised Bukele’s leadership, before addressing the need to “stop illegal immigration and hit transnational bands such as the Aragua train.”
It was received at the airport by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, the ambassador of El Salvador in Washington, Milena Mayorga, and the US ambassador to El Salvador, William H. Duncan, among other diplomatic personnel.
And before meeting with the Salvadoran president, Rubio participated in a tour of a maintenance and assembly center of airplanes of the Aeroman company.
“Aeroman is an example of the positive impact of private investment and the creation of local opportunities,” says the message on the visit shared by the US embassy in El Salvador.
Bukele promised that his second mandate would focus on improving the economy of the country, in slow growth, and that he would partly attracting foreign investment, something that does not occur.
Image source, Courtesy of the presidential house of El Salvador
This is not the first time that Rubio travels to El Salvador to meet Bukele. He already did it in 2023, when the head of American diplomacy was a senator for Florida.
At that time he praised him for “brought freedom” to the Central American country.
He referred to how the Salvadoran President drastically lower the homicide index in the country, while imposeding a state of exception that lasts more than two years and the nation returned with the highest prison rate in the world.
The head of the US diplomacy will continue its first official tour with a view of Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, countries in which the meetings are expected will continue to focus on migration, on curbing China’s influence in the region and frustrate the flow of drugs, especially of fentanyl, towards the US
The visit occurs in a tense period for the region, which has been dealing with the possible economic repercussions of Trump’s policies, such as mass deportations and the interruption of foreign aid.
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