Roots in Crisis: Worse than Guantánamo - Nayib Bukele and Trump’s Deportation Affair.
- Rattlecap Writers
- Mar 29
- 4 min read
The third entry in the column Roots in Crisis, written by Jhonatan Bernal.
El Salvador was once dubbed the murder capital of the world - recording 107 homicides per 100,000 people at its peak. For decades, El Salvador was ruled by rampant gang violence, particularly from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs - both born in the streets of Los Angeles. So when a political outsider, the millennial Nayib Bukele, campaigned to be ‘tough on crime’, he upended El Salvador’s two party system with a landslide victory and now boasts of transforming the country into the safest in the Western hemisphere. Subsequently, El Salvador has become a beacon of hope for a region that has long been plagued by violent crime, corruption and foreign interference. Though, this shiny veneer of safety hides the brutal reality of El Salvador’s stark human rights abuses, democratic backsliding and its flirting with American fascism.
Under the pretext of combatting ‘illegal alien’ crime, Donald Trump seeks to emulate the appeal of the self-described ‘world’s coolest dictator’ by fast-tracking a US-El Salvador pipeline through which to deport Venezuelan and other Latin-American migrants into Bukele’s prisons. This, of course, is part of Trump’s wider mass deportation programs - a key campaign pledge - which violently displace, demonise and traumatise immigrant groups - many of whom fled violence, poverty and injustices originating from US imperialism in the first place. Providing material, diplomatic and ideological support to the Bukele regime, Trump is able to demonstrate his tough credentials on immigration (despite criticism for too few deportations from influential white supremacist Nick Fuentes)- turning the relationship between Trump and Bukele positively symbiotic.
Yet, this is nothing more than the outsourcing of concentration camps - where inmates are subjected to a years worth of labour to produce state equipment and other goods by Bukele’s own admission. What is perhaps most worrying is that Bukele and Trump themselves have openly flaunted violations of American court orders forbidding the immediate deportation of migrants on social media, proving that these deportations are, to some extent, a joint PR venture for both governments. Nevertheless, these remain a repugnant expansion of Trump’s immigration policies; More than two hundred Venezuelan migrants were deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) on flimsy suspicions of belonging to the infamous ‘Tren de Aragua’ gang. Reportedly, many Latin-American migrants have been detained for unrelated tattoos, piercings and other markings perceived to be linked to gang activity - like a Real Madrid tattoo.
Bukele’s willingness to scheme and collaborate with the United States’ government is not just a gesture of goodwill from an authoritarian populist to another. El Salvador receives $6 million to imprison the deportees for up to a year, helping to fund Bukele’s $200 million-a-year prison industrial complex. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), Bukele says this is a very low fee for [the United States], but a high fee for us’ arguing that ‘over time, combined with production generated under the workshops and the Ocio Cero (Zero Leisure) program’, the country’s prison system will become self-sustaining. Of course, this is a mere disguise for the slave labour happening inside this overcrowded prison - already the largest in the Americas. Leather shoes, public service uniforms, furniture, hospital and school equipment are among the goods and services provided by inmates inside Cecot, which has been framed as a social reintegration program - overlooking its inherently exploitative nature, especially when considering that many prisoners never received their legally mandated due process.
Evidently, the spectacle of the prison system has become almost synonymous with Bukele. The mass incarcerations reinforce his messianic image domestically and across the Americas. But this image was built through the forced separation of families, innocent people getting caught in the crossfire, and the erosion of the country’s checks and balances. If anything, El Salvador’s prison system more so resembles a tool of social control through hard, violent state power rather than a rehabilitating environment. Through invoking the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, Trump escalated his assault on migrants to unprecedented legal and moral extremes by allowing the government to deport foreign nationals from ‘enemy’ states without due process. Aided by his designation of MS-13, Mexican Cartels and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organisations, many Latin-Americans in the United States are now caught up in a xenophobic whirlwind which threatens their very lives and freedom. Naturally, many governments in the region, such as Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela have condemned the abhorrent and heart-breaking deportations that their citizens are being
subjected to in the North, calling it a racist criminalisation of migrants. Human rights groups and commentators across the world have compared these deportations to some of the darkest moments in human history and have evoked the image of slavery and concentration camps.
Yet Trump and Nayib Bukele continue to flaunt their collaboration, imagining themselves as two ‘Great Men’ of history and gaining support from their base who often revel in the suffering of migrants. Trump’s campaign hinged on the demonisation of migrants, such as Haitians who were falsely accused of eating pets, or Venezuelans who are all painted as violent criminals by the current administration. In Bukele, Trump finds a convenient proxy through which he can obscure the true extent of American cruelty upon its Hispanic migrants and specifically display the force that it requires. In turn, Bukele receives financial support, political prestige and a reputation with global far-right movements as a model for gaining and consolidating power.
This deportation pipeline is not just about deporting ‘illegal, criminal aliens’; it is a shared political project between two of America’s most famous populists that exploits genuine security concerns from its people to justify the dehumanisation, incarceration and even torture of marginalised populations. It is an example of authoritarian transnational cooperation wherein states work together to dismantle democracy, the rule of law and human rights for their own purposes. This is a partnership which, if left unchecked, will destroy thousands more migrant lives, as well as hinder the rights and freedoms of their respective domestic populations. Nayib Bukele’s role in aiding Trump’s assault on migrants should not be underestimated nor overlooked. This is an ideological love affair that has the potential, and likely has already surpassed, the violent extremes of another US-owned, foreign-based prison, Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
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