The deal for a prisoner exchange proposed by the El Salvadoran president presents a dangerous threat to incarcerated people in the U.S. The continued outsourcing of the U.S. penal system signals the empire’s growing carceral activities and its attempt to remain a dominant force in the region.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has recently proposed a controversial agreement with the United States: to house ‘violent’ criminals from the U.S. in his country’s prisons in exchange for financial compensation. This deal, confirmed by Bukele on social media, would see convicted individuals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents, incarcerated in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) , a mega-prison with a capacity for 40,000 inmates. While Bukele frames this as a mutually beneficial arrangement—low-cost for the U.S. but financially significant for El Salvador—the implications of this agreement extend far beyond economics. It raises critical questions about the global replication of carceral systems, human rights violations, and the broader phenomenon of *prison imperialism*.
CECOT, the centerpiece of Bukele’s anti-crime campaign, is a stark representation of his government’s harsh approach to incarceration. Since its opening in 2023, the facility has been criticized for its inhumane conditions. Inmates are confined in overcrowded cells, denied visitation rights, and stripped of access to rehabilitation programs. The prison’s design prioritizes punitive measures over reform, with no efforts to prepare detainees for reintegration into society. Instead, prisoners are subjected to rigid control, occasional motivational talks, and supervised exercise routines. This model, has drawn condemnation from human rights organizations, which have documented cases of abuse, torture, and neglect, including over 260 deaths during Bukele’s crackdown.
Bukele has been aligning El Salvador with the U.S. agenda since agreeing to send a contingent to Haiti to bolster the occupying entities of the US, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), and the Core Group’s mission led by Kenyan police to help ‘fight gangs’ in the nation.
The ongoing occupation of Haiti and calls for increased foreign military presence in Haiti have been justified as the only solution to political or economic crises. Yet, the true ongoing crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism .
Bukele’s proposal to incarcerate U.S. criminals is not merely a bilateral agreement with the Trump administration; it reflects a broader trend of U.S imperialism’s imposition on the region, only this time it is taking on the face of prison imperialism. This concept refers to the exportation of carceral systems and ideologies from dominant powers like the U.S. to other nations, often under the guise of security or economic cooperation. The U.S., with its massive incarcerated population of 1.9 million and an additional 3.7 million under parole or probation, has long been a global leader in punitive justice. By outsourcing its prisoners to El Salvador, the U.S. not only offloads its carceral burden but also reinforces the global normalization of mass incarceration.
Prison imperialism is deeply intertwined with the mechanisms of capitalism and neoliberal dominance. As capitalism expands beyond national borders, so too do its systems of control. Prisons, as extensions of militarized policing, serve as tools to suppress dissent and maintain order. In the U.S., this system has its roots in settler colonialism and fascist ideologies, which have been exported globally to uphold Western hegemony. The replication of these systems in countries like El Salvador ensures the continued dominance of neoliberal policies, often at the expense of human rights and sovereignty.
The United States, representing just over 4 percent of the world’s population, incarcerates approximately 20 percent of its prisoners. This staggering statistic underscores the scale of the U.S. carceral system, which disproportionately targets Black people, imprisoning them at five times the rate of whites. Beyond the 1.9 million currently incarcerated, another 4.5 million are under explicit carceral surveillance through parole and probation, bringing the total number of people under carceral management to nearly 7 million. When considering the broader impact, estimates suggest that 65 million people—a conservative figure—have passed through this system at some point, leaving them with criminal records that subject them to various forms of exclusion and marginalization.
The carceral state extends even further, infiltrating daily life through border militarization, pervasive surveillance, broken windows policing, police violence, xenophobic legislation, gentrification, deportation, checkpoints, and the school-to-prison pipeline. These mechanisms create a society where carceral logic governs not only prisons but also the “freeworld,” normalizing exclusion and control as tools of governance
The conditions in CECOT and the broader implications of Bukele’s deal highlight the dangers of prioritizing security over human dignity. The lack of due process , the inhumane treatment of prisoners, and the absence of rehabilitation programs underscore the dehumanizing nature of this carceral model. Moreover, the global expansion of such systems criminalizes dissent, both domestically and internationally. Activists and organizers fighting against austerity, neoliberalism, and occupation—such as the African People’s Socialist Party or political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Imam Jamil Al-Amin—are often targeted and silenced by these oppressive structures.
Bukele’s agreement with the U.S. is not just a financial transaction; it is a manifestation of prison imperialism, a system that perpetuates global inequality and repression. By understanding this phenomenon as an extension of capitalist and colonial domination, we can better grasp the interconnectedness of carceral systems worldwide. Resistance to these systems must be equally interconnected, challenging not only the conditions within prisons but also the ideologies that sustain them. As we witness the expansion of punitive justice models, it is imperative to advocate for alternatives that prioritize human rights, rehabilitation, and sovereignty over profit and control.
The fight against prison imperialism is not just about El Salvador or the U.S.; it is about dismantling a global system that thrives on oppression and exploitation.
Erica Caines is a writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. Caines is the Field Operations and Membership coordinator of The Black Alliance For Peace, a member of the survBlack working-class centered Ujima People’s Progress Party in Maryland, and founder of #LiberationThroughReading, providing African children with books that represent them.
Clau O’Brien Moscoso is an organizer and co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team. Originally from Barrios Altos, Lima, she grew up in Kearny, New Jersey. She attended college, lived, and organized in New York City for 15 years, and is now based in Lima, Perú, writing about Latin America and the Caribbean for the Black Agenda Report.
source: Black Agenda Report