The Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The “mega-prison” is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations – a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantánamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.
That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear.
Bukele’s visit this week to Washington DC – where Trump urged him to build more prisons in order to receive US citizens convicted of crimes – showcased the results of the alliance: the internationalisation of the Bukele method.
El Salvador has now been under a “state of exception” – which suspends aspects of the constitution and grants the government extraordinary powers of detention – for three years. So long that the international media has largely stopped reporting each new monthly extension passed by the legislature, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Bukele. According to the official narrative, suspended civil liberties are a paltry price to pay for the effective dismantling of the criminal groups that dominated everyday life in most of El Salvador. Indeed, official data indicates a dramatically reduced homicide rate, and widespread reports of a real freedom from the scourge of gang control.
But the human cost is staggering: El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and its prisoners, including thousands of children, have been subjected to systematic torture and human rights violations. Nonetheless, Bukele remains enormously popular, and he has become an aspirational figure for Latin American leaders across the ideological spectrum.
Until Trump, none of Bukele’s would-be imitators had managed to get beyond rhetorical nods, vague plans to build enormous prisons, or sporadic declarations of states of emergency. What Trump has understood – perhaps instinctively – is that the key isn’t the policies themselves, but rather the sustained, brazen assault on the rule of law, which in itself appears to be “doing something” about the problems.
And like Bukele, Trump claims that the strategy is working. He can point to the fact that migrant camps on the US-Mexico border have emptied, and the flow of people across the treacherous Darién Gap human highway has reversed course, as the cost of seeking asylum in a country that no longer grants it is, at least for now, too great.
Yet these narratives are misleading. Militarising domestic security and conducting mass raids are only the most tweetable facets of Bukele’s strategy. His consolidation of power also involved controlling the legislature, co-opting the judiciary and secretly negotiating with gang leaders. Indeed, in exchange for receiving more than 200 of Trump’s Venezuelan deportees, Bukele negotiated the return of MS-13 gang leaders, who experts say could have revealed details of negotiations the Salvadoran president denies having. Likewise, reduced numbers at the US southern border also reflects years of US pressure, by Democrat and Republican governments, on Mexico and Central American countries to deter migration.
The judicial front could be a litmus test for Trump’s version of the Bukele method. In Brazil, the judiciary served as a counter to Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian slide. Perhaps US institutions, far more robust than El Salvador’s, will follow this path. In the US, courts have resisted parts of the deportation agenda, and the executive, in turn, has defied the judiciary. Cases involving the deportations to El Salvador could potentially spark a constitutional crisis, pitting the two branches of government against each other.
But it might not matter. Trump’s real innovation has been to outsource the most egregious parts of his immigration crackdown, both to the private sector and to foreign actors and sites. This could, potentially, leave much of it beyond the reach of domestic courts. Private companies run deportation flights where some people have been shackled hand and foot, with no concern for their safety. Trump has made use of legal black holes like Guantánamo, and is advancing towards reappropriating military bases in Panamanian territory. El Salvador is not just an ally – it’s a penal colony, a back-office subcontractor.
The case of Kilmar Ábrego García illustrates the human cost of the emerging Bukele-Trump method. The Salvadoran man was deported by US authorities due to what authorities later described as an “administrative error”. In a cynical back and forth, Trump and Bukele claim that Abrego García’s release from the prison is beyond their control. He is just one of the thousands arbitrarily detained and labeled as terrorists by both governments. This is not a byproduct, but rather an integral part of the approach, calculated to instil terror.
How many more times will we see this? In March, a Venezuelan couple legally residing in Washington DC were detained in front of their children. Off camera, one child cries out: “They are taking him and he hasn’t done anything,” while a younger sibling simply sobs for their mother. Last month, plainclothes immigration agents detained Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student just outside Boston – apparently in retaliation for an op-ed she co-published in the Tufts Daily, calling for divestment from Israel. Security footage shows a hooded man seizing her hands as Öztürk screams in terror. Masked agents then escort her down a residential street, a scene that could have been lifted from the books explaining the breakdowns of Latin America’s democracies that I studied at that same university, just metres away from where Öztürk was disappeared. It can, indeed, happen here.
Bukele has shown how a state of exception can be sustained not just through brute force, but by raising the cost of speaking out. Under his state of exception, anybody can be labeled a criminal and critics often are. Trump is following suit, his policies have already effectively limited freedom of expression for a class of people that must now stay silent for fear of being grabbed off the streets. What Bukele and Trump have both understood is that fear doesn’t just suppress resistance. It can be the foundation of a lasting new order.
Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She edits the Latin America Daily Briefing
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
