President Donald Trump is scheduled on Monday to host El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, for a bilateral meeting at the White House.
Trump early on Sunday told reporters he thought Bukele was doing a “fantastic job” and “taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn’t be able to take care of from a cost standpoint.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media onboard Air Force One, on a flight to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S. April 13, 2025.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
As the second Trump administration has cracked down on immigration, El Salvador has accepted into its custody hundreds of alleged gang members. Many are housed in the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security facility for El Salvador’s most hardened criminals.
“We have some very bad people in that prison, people that should have never been allowed into our country, people that murder drug dealers, some of the worst people on Earth are in that prison and he’s able to do that,” Trump said on Sunday.
U.S. military personnel escort an alleged gang member who was deported by the U.S. along with others the U.S. alleges are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center prison, at the El Salvador International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, April 12, 2025.
Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia via Reuters
At least one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported due to an “administrative error” and is being held at that notorious prison.