SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The Trump administration said Friday it was in talks with El Salvador to revive an agreement that could allow the United States to send non-Salvadoran migrants to the Central American country.
This time, though, the government would also aim to send members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to Salvadoran prisons, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the State Department’s special envoy for Latin America, in a call with media outlets.
It comes after a harsh crackdown on the country’s gangs by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. Bukele suspended key constitutional rights in 2022 and arrested 84,000 people, more than 1% of the country’s population. The majority of them remain in prison without being sentenced.
Bukele’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The crackdown has fueled human rights criticisms but has resulted in a sharp drop in violence in El Salvador, once plagued by the warring Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs.
Despite concerns over democracy, Bukele has drawn the admiration of many American right-wing figures. Simultaneously, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has also become a buzzword for Trump in speeches and politicians on the right.
“If we commit to reviving this agreement and include … members of the Tren de Aragua gang, I bet they’re going to want to go back to Venezuela instead of dealing with the Mara prisons in El Salvador,” Claver-Carone said.
Claver-Carone spoke about the talks ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio ‘s trip to Latin America. Rubio is set to visit El Salvador on Monday between visits to Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
Top on the agenda is migration, and Rubio is likely to push allies like Bukele to help the Trump administration in its migratory crackdown and to accept migrants from countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba that largely don’t accept deportation flights from the U.S.
Claver-Carone provided few additional details about what “reviving” the agreement would entail. Trump in 2019 carried out a program known as “Safe Third Countries.”
During his first term, Trump reached agreements that would require people to apply for protective status in countries deemed “safe” that they passed through before reaching the U.S. border.
But it was sharply criticized as a way to cut off access for people to apply for asylum in the U.S. There were also doubts about the safety of vulnerable people in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, countries terrorized by gangs that often prey on vulnerable migrants.
Reviving the program would just be the latest step by Trump in slashing access to asylum after a slate of executive actions in his first days in office.
In the Friday call, Claver-Carone also called Bukele “the most consequential president in the region” and an “ally” on migration issues.
As Salvadoran migration to the U.S. dipped in recent years, Bukele has taken steps to block migrants from passing through the country on the way to the U.S. amid pressures from the Biden administration. As he did, the Biden administration toned down criticisms of Bukele after warning of democratic backsliding in El Salvador.