El Salvador’s New Business Model Fills Jails
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El Salvador’s New Business Model Fills Jails
EL SALVADOR
Last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made an unusual offer to the United States: He said he was willing to take violent prisoners in US jails – citizens, legal residents, and migrants of any nationality – and house them in a mega-prison that now holds tens of thousands of suspected gang members.
The offer was warmly welcomed.
Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after meeting with Bukele in early February. “We can send them, and he will put them in his jails.”
“There are obviously legalities involved – we have a constitution,” he added. “But it’s a very generous offer. No one’s ever made an offer like that.”
Bukele has made El Salvador’s harsh prisons a trademark of his aggressive fight against crime. Now he’s offering to “outsource” them for a fee, he said on X, explaining that the payments would make the enterprise sustainable, essentially a viable business model.
The crown jewel of the prison system is the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which was opened in 2023 just outside of the capital of San Salvador. It can house about 40,000 inmates.
Bukele says the prison is a symbol of El Salvador’s successful transformation: “El Salvador has managed to go from being the world’s most dangerous country to the safest country in the Americas. How did we do it? By putting criminals in jail. Is there space? There is now.”
For years, powerful street gangs had a stranglehold on the country, terrorizing residents, strangling business, and threatening governance.
Then, in 2019, Bukele was elected on a promise to bring crime under control. Three years later, he declared a state of emergency, suspended civil liberties, and sent the army out into the streets after rival gangs went to war and killed 62 people in a few hours.
Since then, about 84,000 people have been arrested, in three years tripling the prison population to about 110,000 in the country of about 6 million.
Homicide rates have plummeted, life has changed. “The environment where we live is very different now,” one woman told the Associated Press. “It’s very quiet now for the family, for the kids.”
El Salvador last year had a record low 114 homicides, a decrease of almost 50 percent over 2023. In 2015, there were 6,656 homicides.
As a result, Bukele’s approval ratings among voters hover in the 90 percent range. He won the election last year with 83 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, the number of Salvadorans trying to cross the border into the United States has fallen by a third.
Now, he’s looking ahead, trying to revamp the country in other ways, too. Recently, he lured Tether, the world’s leading stablecoin firm, to El Salvador to create its first physical headquarters. That’s part of his attempt to turn El Salvador into crypto central: In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. Last week, however, the International Monetary Fund told the country to stop accumulating and mining the currency.
He’s been reshaping the government, too. Recently, he’s changed the constitution to make it easier to change it. Now he’s trying to eliminate public financing of political campaigns. Both moves, critics say, are designed to eliminate political competition.
As a result, the “World’s Coolest Dictator,” as he calls himself, has opposition groups, human rights organizations, and others worried.
A year ago, he won his second term even though the constitution forbids consecutive terms for presidents by packing the judiciary and resigning just before the election. Now he’s already talking about an illegal third term. Meanwhile, he has cracked down on journalists, unions, and civil society groups, intimidated opposition lawmakers, and ousted judges who cross him, wrote World Politics Review.
He has also jailed thousands without any access to lawyers or due process: Amnesty International said that El Salvador is essentially undertaking the “gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence.”
El Salvador has become the most incarcerated country in the world, with 1.6 percent of the Salvadoran population now behind bars – more than four times that of the United States.
Now, there is a different type of climate of fear in the country: Salvadorans say that it is common to end up in jail because someone has anonymously reported them to the police, who don’t investigate the claims.
Meanwhile, the US State Department describes El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons as “harsh and dangerous,” lacking water and other basics. El Salvadoran officials say they want to keep these individuals in jail for life, regardless of what crime they have – or haven’t committed.
Now, Bukele is turning his success at reducing crime into a nationwide business by importing criminals. As Foreign Policy noted, “Where El Salvador has become a true leader – not only in the Western Hemisphere but globally – is incarceration.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Arab Nations Push Gaza Counter Plan
ISRAEL/ WEST BANK & GAZA
Arab leaders this week endorsed a $53 billion plan for the reconstruction and governance of post-war Gaza, countering US President Donald Trump’s proposal, while also calling for a renewed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Washington Post reported.
On Tuesday, heads of state and senior officials of the 22-member League of Arab States adopted the proposal following an emergency summit in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital.
The endorsement of the plan followed the Trump administration’s unveiling of a proposal to transform Gaza – which has been devastated by 15 months of war – into a luxury, US-controlled “Riviera of the Middle East.” The US plans also called for the displacement of the territory’s more than two million Palestinians to other countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, which Arab nations swiftly rejected.
The Arab new plan proposes to rebuild Gaza over five years, exclude Hamas from governance while gradually restoring Palestinian Authority (PA) control, and deploy international peacekeepers to ensure security in the region.
In a 91-page document, the leaders outlined a three-phase reconstruction plan that includes the clearing of debris, followed by housing and infrastructure redevelopment, and eventually the establishment of an airport, two seaports, and an industrial zone.
Egypt and Jordan will train a Palestinian police force to facilitate the PA’s return to Gaza, while governance will be overseen by an independent “Gaza Administrative Committee” during the transition.
The plan explicitly rejects any forced displacement of Palestinians, with Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit saying that Palestinians “have the right to live in peace on their land.”
The PA and Hamas have expressed support for the plan, though the armed group insisted that all Palestinian factions must be consulted before inviting international peacekeepers into Gaza.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, pledged to reform the PA, appoint a deputy, and hold elections “in the coming year” to ensure a unified Palestinian leadership.
However, Israel and the United States dismissed the proposal, with Israeli officials accusing Arab nations of rejecting an opportunity for Gazans “to have free choice” under Trump’s plan, the BBC noted.
The US and Israel argued that the proposal does not align with the realities on the ground, especially that the enclave is nearly uninhabitable.
Analysts said that despite unanimous support among Arab nations, there are questions regarding the financing of the plan and what exactly will happen to Hamas, including the latter’s disarmament.
Meanwhile, the Arab summit coincided with growing uncertainty over the ceasefire in Gaza, which expired Saturday after an initial six-week truce.
Israel since the weekend has blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, demanding that Hamas accept a new US proposal for a temporary extension. But the Iran-backed group emphasized that negotiations must proceed to the second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for a full Israeli military withdrawal.
Political Crackdown Intensifies In Tunisia
TUNISIA
A high-profile trial of 40 people, including leading opposition figures, accused of terrorism and other charges began Tuesday in the capital Tunis, part of an ongoing and intensifying crackdown on dissent by the government, the Associated Press reported.
Some of the opposition politicians, former diplomats, business leaders, journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders are on trial for plotting against state security and belonging to a terrorist group, while others are suspected of illegal connections with foreign parties and diplomats.
Some of the charges carry the death penalty.
Meanwhile, nine of the defendants were deemed by the court as too dangerous to be released from custody, a move protested by their lawyers and demonstrators as violating the suspects’ civil rights.
Protesters gathered outside of the courthouse as the trial began. Some of the defendants had already fled the country, while others spent over two years in pre-trial detention.
During the proceedings, the families of the accused filled the chamber chanting “freedom” and accusing the judiciary of bowing to the government, Al Jazeera reported.
Human rights groups strongly criticized the government for bringing the charges, and the treatment of the accused, with the International Commission of Jurists saying there has been “systematic violations of their rights” that undermine the trial’s legitimacy and impartiality.
The head of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights called it “one of the darkest injustices in Tunisia’s history.”
Critics of President Kais Saied say the charges are manufactured while Saied, re-elected for a second term last year amid little competition, said the defendants, who accused him of staging a coup in 2021, are “traitors and terrorists.”
This trial is part of an ongoing crackdown against Saied’s political opponents. The former speaker of parliament and the leader of the secular Free Constitutional Party have both been imprisoned since 2023.
Since Saied took office, Tunisia has reversed the freedoms it gained in 2011 after ousting its longtime dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an act that sparked the series of revolutions across the Middle East that became the Arab Spring. But after coming to power in 2019, Saied then seized total control two years later by dissolving parliament, firing the prime minister, and instituting rule by decree.
Saied has also weakened the judiciary by dismissing judges and dissolving a body that guaranteed judicial independence.
The president’s supporters say his actions are needed to stabilize Tunisia’s struggle with inflation, unemployment, and corruption.
South Sudan VP Arrest Ignites Fears of New War
SOUTH SUDAN
Soldiers surrounded South Sudan Vice President Riek Machar’s home in the country’s capital of Juba on Wednesday after an armed group linked to him overran an army base in the country’s north, setting off fears of a new civil war, Al Jazeera reported.
Among the people detained during the fighting at the army base on Tuesday was Deputy Army Chief Gen. Gabriel Duop Lam, a close ally of Machar’s.
Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, another ally of the vice president, was arrested along with his family and bodyguards, Business Insider Africa reported.
The arrests followed clashes in the strategic northern town of Nasir between federal troops and the White Army militia, an organization primarily made up of armed Nuer, Machar’s ethnic group.
The White Army fought alongside Machar’s forces in the 2013–2018 civil war against ethnic Dinka troops loyal to President Salva Kiir.
Machar said last month that the firing of some of his allies from government positions threatened the fragile 2018 peace deal between him and Kiir.
South Sudan has faced instability since splitting from Sudan in 2011 and is struggling to implement the 2018 peace agreement that ended the civil war in which almost 400,000 people died. Elections were slated to take place last year but they have been rescheduled for 2026 due to a lack of funds.
Water Minister Pal Mai Deng, spokesperson of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, said that Lam’s detention “puts the entire peace agreement at risk.”
Ter Manyang Gatwich, executive director of the Center for Peace and Advocacy, urged the immediate release of detainees to prevent the outbreak of a full-scale war.
DISCOVERIES
Early Bird
For over a century, Archaeopteryx has held the title of the “first bird,” a feathered fossil linking dinosaurs to their modern descendants.
But that distinction may now be in doubt, after paleontologists in China recently unearthed a 149-million-year-old fossil that pushes back the timeline of early avian evolution.
In their new study, the research team suggested that birds had already begun to diversify by the end of the Jurassic period.
Discovered in Fujian Province, the fossil belongs to a newly named species, Baminornis zhenghensis, and shows features placing it firmly in the avian lineage.
Unlike Archaeopteryx, which retained many reptilian traits – including a long, bony tail – this new fossil sports a pygostyle, a compound bone at the tail’s end seen in modern birds.
“Previously, the oldest record of short-tailed birds is from the Early Cretaceous,” said lead author Wang Min in a press release. “Baminornis zhenghensis is the sole Jurassic and the oldest short-tailed bird yet discovered, pushing back the appearance of this derived bird feature by nearly 20 million years.”
The fossil showed a mix of primitive and advanced traits, including a bird-like shoulder and pelvic structure but a hand more akin to that of non-avian dinosaurs. These peculiar features underscore how early birds evolved gradually, blending traits from their dinosaur ancestors before refining the sleek, flight-ready forms seen today.
The discovery comes amid an ongoing debate over Archaeopteryx’s status as a true bird. Some researchers posit it belongs to a separate group of feathered dinosaurs, raising the question of whether any unambiguous Jurassic birds exist, Cosmos Magazine noted.
“If we take a step back and reconsider the phylogenetic uncertainty of Archaeopteryx, we do not doubt that Baminornis zhenghensis is the true Jurassic bird,” co-author Zhou Zhonghe added.
A second fossil from the site, though incomplete, hints at another early bird relative. A single preserved bone suggests ties to Ornithuromorpha, a group that would later dominate the Cretaceous period.
However, researchers are holding off on naming a new species until more evidence emerges.