Trump hosts Bukele at White House as El Salvador plays key role in administration’s immigration agenda

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — In an era when American alliances have been strained to their breaking point by tariff wars and disputes over military spending, one leader has inserted himself firmly in President Donald Trump’s good graces: El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who is visiting the White House on Monday.

Bukele’s willingness to accept hundreds of migrants who the Trump administration claims are gang members or violent criminals has been critical to the president’s ambition of deporting as many as a million undocumented people before the first year of his second term is over.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who announced Sunday that an additional 10 alleged gang members had been sent to El Salvador, wrote online that Trump and Bukele’s alliance “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

Monday’s visit cements Bukele’s status as one of the closest foreign partners of the new Trump administration, which has alienated some traditional US allies in its early days. One of the region’s most popular leaders, Bukele has called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and the “philosopher king” as he suspends certain civil liberties to go after his country’s gangs.

That has earned him the ire of international human rights organizations, which allege large-scale abuses in his crackdown on crime. But it has also earned him popularity inside El Salvador; Bukele, 43, won reelection last year by a landslide.

Trump has taken notice. He called his counterpart “President B” on social media over the weekend and praised him for “graciously” accepting “some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States.”

“I think he’s doing a fantastic job. He’s taking care of a lot of problems that we have,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One early Sunday morning, as he was returning from Miami after watching a UFC fight.

“He’s been amazing,” Trump said, brushing off any human rights concerns. “They have some very bad people in that prison.”

The facility Trump was referencing is the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which Bukele has invited the US to use to jail deportees for a fee. El Salvador’s justice and public security minister released a highly produced video Sunday showing the 10 deportees who arrived over the weekend being loaded off a plane and marched into the prison in shackles.

The administration has claimed those sent to El Salvador are terrorists or violent criminals, but evidence proving as much has been scant. Government lawyers have cited tattoos or clothing linked to gangs in court papers to allege criminality.

To deport some of the men, the administration has relied on the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old law allowed for summary deportations in times of war. The Supreme Court said last week the administration could continue using the law for now to remove migrants from the US.

In a separate decision, the high court said the administration must “facilitate” the return of a Maryland father mistakenly deported to El Salvador, though it stopped short of requiring the government to return him to the United States.

Trump said afterward he would follow the court’s directive if it ordered him to “bring somebody back,” though attorneys for the Justice Department haven’t been able to provide information about what they are doing to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the US.

The Trump administration did say in a filing Saturday that Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. A day later, the administration insisted it is not required to work with officials in El Salvador to secure Abergo Garcia’s return — an argument that has the potential of setting up another high-profile showdown between the administration and the federal judiciary over immigration.

Asked in a briefing last week whether Bukele might bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States during the leader’s trip, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demurred, noting the court required the administration to “facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return.”

“President Bukele will be here at the White House on Monday to talk about the cooperation that is at an all-time high,” she said. “And we very much appreciate President Bukele and El Salvador’s cooperation and the repatriation of El Salvadorian gang members who the previous administration allowed to infiltrate our country.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.