El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele extended an offer to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Monday meeting that his country is ready to house prisoners from the United States in its CECOT maximum security prison built to house gang members.

“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee,” said President Bukele on X on Monday night.

The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable,” he added.

Rubio responded favorably in principle to Bukele’s offer, saying that the arrangement will make Americans safer.

“His commitment to accept and incarcerate criminals from any country, including from violent gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, will make America safer,” said Rubio.

“In an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including US citizens and legal residents,” he added.

If formally accepted, the arrangement would allow America to deport the worst of its illegal immigrant criminals to Bukele’s CECOT, specifically designed to house gang and cartel murderers.

Rubio did not provide any details on when the arrangement could go into effect or whether the Trump administration intends to actually send American citizens to the Central American nation.

While the U.S. government has the legal right to deport non-citizens, it does not currently have a provision allowing for the deportation of citizens, and an attempt by the Trump Administration to send American criminals to El Salvador’s would almost certainly spark legal challenges. The federal government’s Bureau of Prisons falls under the U.S. Department of Justice, which would likely have to approve such an arrangement.

Bukele has drawn both criticism and praise for his unprecedented crackdown on gang violence.

Following the 2022 murder of 62 people at the hands of gangs in El Salvador on a single day, Bukele’s government temporarily suspended some constitutional protections in what it referred to as a State of Exception, particularly rights surrounding the treatment of prisoners and those that would hamper swift trials.

He used the crackdown to arrest tens of thousands of gang members, with January data indicating that the country has detained 83,900 people since its war on gangs began with the State of Exception in 2022.

The year after Bukele’s crackdown began, the nation’s murder rate dropped by 70 percent, and 2024 became the nation’s safest year on record.

The State of Exception was renewed most recently in January of this year.

In order to accommodate the gang crackdown, Bukele constructed the massive CECOT, a maximum-security prison with a 40,000-prisoner capacity, designed to keep prisoners from leaving for any reason.

The prison’s security measures have sparked complaints from human rights groups, who are opposed to its methods of ensuring absolute security by denying prisoners many of the amenities given to criminals in nations such as the U.S.

Despite the State of Exception and the complaints about inhumane treatment of prisoners, Bukele has proven to be an extremely popular president, with recent 2024 polls placing his approval rating above 90 percent.