SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that El Salvador’s offer to accept and jail violent American criminals raises clear legal issues but described it as “very generous” and said that President Donald Trump would make a decision on whether to accept it.
A day earlier, Rubio reached an unusual agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept U.S. deportees of any nationality, including American citizens who are imprisoned for violent crimes.
“There are obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution,” Rubio said at a news conference Tuesday in San Jose with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves. “But it’s a very generous offer. No one’s ever made an offer like that. And to outsource, at a fraction of the cost, at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have in the United States. But obviously, the administration will have to make a decision.”
Rubio met Chaves and discussed immigration — a Trump administration priority — as America's top diplomat also faces major upheaval at the U.S. Agency for International Development that has left many at the aid agency and the State Department uneasy and fearful for their jobs.
It comes a day after he met with Bukele, who confirmed the offer in a post on X, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.” He said his country would accept only “convicted criminals” and would charge a fee that “would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
The State Department describes El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons as “harsh and dangerous.” Its country information webpage says, “In many facilities, provisions for sanitation, potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are inadequate or nonexistent.”
El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency since March 2022, when the country’s powerful street gangs went on a killing rampage. Bukele responded by suspending fundamental rights like access to lawyers, and authorities have arrested more than 83,000 people with little to no due process.
In 2023, Bukele opened a massive new prison with capacity for 40,000 gang members and cut prisoners’ meals to twice a day. Prisoners there do not receive visits, and there are no programs preparing them for reinsertion into society after their sentences and no workshops or educational programs.
El Salvador, once one of the most dangerous countries in the world, closed last year with a record low 114 homicides, a newfound security that has propelled Bukele’s soaring popularity in the country of about 6 million residents.
Migration has been the top issue for Rubio’s five-nation Central American tour spanning Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic following stops in Panama and El Salvador.
While Rubio was out of the U.S. this week, USAID staffers and Democratic lawmakers were blocked from its Washington headquarters Monday after Elon Musk, which is running a budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, announced Trump had agreed with him to shut the aid agency.
Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs worldwide shut down. Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated that authority so he would not be running its day-to-day operations.
In a letter Rubio sent to lawmakers that was obtained by The Associated Press, he said the State Department would work with Congress “to reorganize and absorb certain bureaus, offices and missions of USAID.”
He said the processes at the agency, which has been hit by Trump's freeze on all foreign assistance, are not well coordinated and that “undermines the President's ability to carry out foreign relations.”
“In consultation with Congress, USAID may move, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus and offices into the Department of State, and the remainder of the Agency may be abolished consistent with applicable law,” Rubio wrote.
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AP reporters Christopher Sherman in Mexico City and Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.
Matthew Lee, The Associated Press
