Trump intends to send American criminals to serve their sentences in other countries

President Donald Trump said Feb. 4 that he is considering pursuing an offer from El Salvador to accept and jail American criminals, though he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledge obvious legal challenges, writes Associated Press.

Photo: Joe Sohm | Dreamstime.com

Rubio reached an unusual deal with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele the day before. The Central American country agreed to accept deportees from the United States of any nationality, including American citizens and legal residents convicted of violent crimes.

“If we had the legal right, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Feb. 4. “I don’t know if we have it, but we’re looking into it.”

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At an earlier press conference in San Jose with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chavez, Rubio noted that "there are certain legal issues, and we also have a Constitution."

But Rubio stressed that it was "a very generous offer. No one has ever offered anything like this — the ability to transfer, relatively cheaply, at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals from the United States."

Immigration, a priority of the Trump administration, was once again in the spotlight during Rubio’s first overseas trip as America’s top diplomat. While he was abroad on a five-day trip, USAID employees and Democratic lawmakers were barred from the agency’s Washington headquarters after Elon Musk, who heads the Office of Government Effectiveness, announced that Trump had agreed to shut down the agency.

Thousands of USAID employees have already been laid off and programs around the world have been scaled back after Trump imposed a sweeping moratorium on foreign aid immediately after taking office.

Rubio later proposed exemptions for life-saving programs, but uncertainty about which projects qualify and which do not, and fears of a complete loss of U.S. aid, continue to paralyze international aid and development efforts.

“If any organization receives U.S. funding and doesn’t know how to apply for a waiver, I have serious questions about the organization’s competence,” Rubio said. “I suspect they are deliberately sabotaging the process to make a political statement.”

"I continue to support foreign aid. But foreign aid is not charity," he said, stressing that every dollar spent by the United States must benefit the national interest.

Amid domestic turmoil, Rubio and Chavez discussed immigration and security issues facing Costa Rica, which has become not only a transit country for migrants heading to the United States but also a destination for thousands of Nicaraguans since the crackdown on the opposition began in Nicaragua in 2018.

Costa Rica has also seen a sharp increase in drug-related violence in the past two years.

"We understand that we need to step up the fight against international organized crime," Chavez said, noting that Rubio had proposed continuing U.S. support through waivers that would allow foreign aid to continue to flow.

After his visit to Costa Rica, Rubio traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Bernardo Arevalo.

This came after a meeting in San Salvador on February 3 with Bukele, who in a post on the X platform confirmed the deportation proposal, saying that El Salvador "offered the United States the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system."

Bukele clarified that his country would only accept “convicted criminals” and intends to charge a fee that “would be relatively low for the United States, but significant for us, which would make our entire prison system sustainable.”

The US State Department describes El Salvador's overcrowded prisons as "brutal and dangerous." Its country information page says: "In many facilities, sanitation, access to potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are either inadequate or completely absent."

El Salvador has been under a state of emergency since March 2022, when the country’s powerful street gangs launched a wave of killings. In response, Bukele suspended fundamental rights, including access to lawyers, and authorities arrested more than 83 people with little or no due process.

In 2023, Bukele opened a new, massive prison with a capacity for 40 people and reduced the number of meals for inmates to two times a day. Inmates there are denied visits, no programs to prepare them for re-entry into society after serving their sentences, and no workshops or educational programs.

El Salvador, once one of the world's most dangerous countries, ended last year with a record low homicide rate of 114, helping to boost Bukele's popularity among the country's 6 million people.

Immigration was the focus of Rubio’s trip, which included Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now acting USAID administrator, but had delegated his authority so as not to be involved in the day-to-day running of the agency. In a letter sent to lawmakers, he said the State Department would work with Congress “to reorganize and integrate certain USAID bureaus, offices and missions.”

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He stressed that processes at the agency, which has been hit by Trump's freeze on all foreign aid, are not properly coordinated, and that this "undermines the president's ability to implement foreign policy."

"In consultation with Congress, USAID may relocate, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus, and offices into the Department of State, and the remainder of the agency may be eliminated in accordance with legislation," Rubio wrote.

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