US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday acknowledged potential legal issues around El Salvador’s offer to take in American prisoners, but said the proposal was worth considering.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has built Latin America’s largest prison, offered on Monday to let President Donald Trump outsource the US prison system by sending inmates to his country.
“Obviously, we’ll have to study it on our end. There are obviously legalities involved,” Rubio told reporters a day afterward in Costa Rica.
“We have a constitution, we have all sorts of things, but it’s a very generous offer,” Rubio said.
“No one’s ever made an offer like that, 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,” Rubio said.
“But obviously the administration will have to make a decision.”
There are few precedents in modern times for a democratic country to send its own citizens to foreign prisons.
