President Trump said on Tuesday that he was open to an offer from the president of El Salvador to criminals sentenced to prison, including American citizens, in the famous “megaprison” of the Nation of Central.
“If we had the legal right to do so, I would do it in the blink of an eye,” said Trump.
He almost surely does not have the legal right to do so, say the legal experts, and any attempt to realize the plan of President Nayib Bukele would probably be disputed in court.
But Mr. Bukele’s proposal essentially transforming El Salvador into a criminal colony for the United States showed how ready to define himself as Mr. Trump primary ally In a region that the American president has disparaged. And for Mr. Trump, even reflecting on the proposal reported his willingness to embrace extreme measures to show that it is difficult for illegal crime and immigration.
“It is quite extraordinary and unprecedented and alarming in many ways,” said Michael E. Shifter, principal researcher at the Institute for the Research for Inter -American Dialogue in Washington. “I know that many experts have raised questions on the constitutionality and legality of this agreement, but Bukele is a leader who has absolute power in Salvador and it seems that Trump seems to evolve in a similar direction by trying to reduce or to eliminate everything checks his power.
Mr. Bukele, who reshaped his country by repressing gangs and civil freedoms, said that it would be open to the imprisonment of the deportees of the Terrorism Center Center, a prison built to house 40,000 people who have aroused group worries Defense of human rights on extreme overcrowding and torture relationships by guards.
Despite questions about its legality, the proposal aroused the praise of Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, as well as Elon Musk, the billionaire and powerful Trump advisor who began to redo the government. This would also imply imprisonment for undocumented fees of migrants from any country, not just El Salvador, who had been found guilty of crimes.
“There are obviously legality involved. We have a constitution, ”Rubio told journalists at Costa Rica on Monday. “But it’s a very generous offer.”
But the experts said that these “legality” had practically excluded the basic premise from the agreement.
“It is illegal to send us prisoners to another country,” said Andrea Flores, vice-president of immigration policy to the defense group FWD.US and a former head of the National Security Council. “It would probably be in violation of the Constitution and protection against cruel and unusual treatments.”
While legal and immigration experts said that the Americans’ prison proposal was probably a simple effort from Mr. Bukele to appease Trump, Trump and his collaborators consider El Salvador as a key partner for the application of immigration. El Salvador signed what is called A “third -party country” agreement in 2019 Receive non-Salvadorians detained in the United States. This agreement has never been implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a person who knows the question.
Mr. Bukele stands out in Latin America as a leader who will jump at the opportunity to strengthen his ties with Mr. Trump, even if that means collaborating on his aggressive immigration policies. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bukele sought to forge an image of an iconoclast willing to repress crime while upsetting traditional government institutions.
While El Salvador once had one of the highest murders’ murder rates, the murders have dropped while Mr. Bukele used an emergency declaration and the army for Stop tens of thousands of people across the countrymainly without regular procedure.
When Mr. Bukele offered in the United States what he called “the opportunity to outsource part of his penitentiary system” in Salvador, he included images showing dozens of bare-folded tattooed prisoners folding with the Hands on the head while the guards armed in ballistic equipment stood standing. watch.
On Tuesday, when he expressed his support for Mr. Bukele’s proposal, Trump took place about “hardened criminals” in the United States, a frequent complaint when he sought to cultivate an image of law and order. The figures, however, have not carefully aligned the image he seeks to project. Homicides increased during his first mandate before Fall under his successorPresident Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“It is an administration where there are a lot of shows and a lot of fear, and no one in Latin America is better than Nayib Bukele,” said Shifter. “I would expect to see many more shows between Bukele and Trump and his administration.”
Michael Crowley The reports contributed to Costa Rica, and Hamed Aleaziz from Washington.
