Salvadoran Church leader to Bukele: Don’t turn country into US prison

Inmates remain in their cell as Costa Rica’s Minister of Security Gerald Campos tours the Centre for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) during a visit organized by El Salvador’s Presidency in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on April 4, 2025. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

SAN SALVADOR — El Salvador’s top Catholic leader on Sunday urged President Nayib Bukele not to turn the country into a Guantanamo-style US prison, after Bukele made a deal with Washington to house deported migrants from the United States in a notorious jail.

“We ask that our authorities not allow our country to become a big international prison,” Jose Luis Escobar, the archbishop of San Salvador, told reporters.

Bukele’s visit Monday to the White House confirmed his growing alliance with like-minded US President Donald Trump.

READ: Trump hosts El Salvador’s Bukele, key ally in anti-migrant push

The Salvadoran leader has agreed to imprison hundreds of migrants, many of them Venezuelans, expelled by the United States. They are being held in an enormous mega-prison where rights groups have decried conditions as inhumane.

Trump has invoked the little-known Alien Enemies Act of 1798, previously used only in times of war, as he moves to expel migrants who he says are mostly violent criminals.

Families and lawyers of many of those expelled under the crackdown dispute that characterization, with some saying their family members were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.

Escobar mentioned recent opinion articles warning that “El Salvador could become a new Guantanamo” — the sprawling Cuban territory leased by the United States to serve as a naval base.

READ: Bukele rules out returning migrant, in love-fest with Trump

In recent decades it has seen use by Washington as a prison for detainees accused of terrorism but held without trial and for expelled migrants.

Bukele has said he is eager to help with Trump’s effort to drastically reduce the number of undocumented migrants in the United States.

But Escobar warned that El Salvador “could become a prison where the United States could send prisoners at a lower cost than what they spend in Guantanamo.”

“We ask the government not to allow it,” he added.

Several of those expelled to El Salvador were first jailed in Guantanamo.