Trump Signals Support for Sending US Prisoners to Foreign Countries

President Trump listens after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on Feb. 3, 2025. The Canadian Press/AP/Evan Vucci

As the work gets underway to send illegal immigrant prisoners to prisons outside of the United States, President Donald Trump has signaled his support for also exporting prisoners who are American citizens.

“We’re talking about getting the criminals out of our country that come in through other countries illegally, right? The illegal migrants, as I call them,” he said to members of the press in the Oval Office on Feb. 4. “Well, we have people that are just as bad as them in our country. If we could get them out, I'd be very happy.”

Trump went on to say that he was not sure at the time if his administration could legally transfer convicted American citizens to other countries, but said he would “do it in a heartbeat” if he had the legal right to do so.

He suggested that such exportations would be for “hardened criminals,” referring to one instance where an unnamed male prisoner was arrested 42 times, and each time he was arrested for a heinous crime. He added that it would be a great deterrent for criminals, and he criticized the judicial system for allowing such criminals back on the street.

“That person that has been arrested 42 times or 22 times or 17 times and is all in for manslaughter and everything else, and only gets out because of a very weak judicial system that only goes after people like Trump. They don’t go after the criminals,” he said. ”They don’t go after people like this, and they laugh at our law.”

Trump said the United States would have to pay a fee but it would be no different than how the domestic privatized prison system is compensated, and that fee would be a fraction of what it costs to house those criminals stateside.

El Salvador, which offered to take any criminal illegal immigrants of any nationality from the United States, has already offered to take the prisoners off of America’s hands. More information will be released later regarding which offenses would warrant prisoners being shipped off to Central America.

“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele stated on X after his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Feb. 4.

All incoming prisoners would be added to El Salvador’s new “mega-prison” for a fee that Bukele described as being “relatively low for the U.S.” yet also high enough to help sustain his prison system.

Named the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the mega-prison opened in 2023 in the town of Tecoluca amid Bukele’s intense crackdown on his nation’s crime and gang activities. It can hold 40,000 inmates, with cells holding 65 to 70 inmates each, according to The Associated Press. Bukele has also agreed to take in members of MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.

“El Salvador has managed to go from being the world’s most dangerous country, to the safest country in the Americas,” Bukele said on Twitter at the time of the prison’s opening. “How did we do it? By putting criminals in jail. Is there space? There is now.”

Rubio said that Bukele offered his “full cooperation” and celebrated the deal as the most unprecedented migratory agreement in the world.

Aldgra Fredly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.