El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to visit White House on Monday

David Catanese, The Charlotte Observer on Apr 8, 2025

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WASHINGTON — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

“They will discuss El Salvador’s partnership on using their super max prison for Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members and how El Salvador’s cooperation with the United States has become a model for others to work with this administration,” Leavitt said.

The summit will come in the wake of the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members from the U.S. to a maximum prison in El Salvador, which Bukele offered to Trump as a way to help him carry out his immigration policy.

It will mark the first White House visit by a Salvadoran president since 2014, when President Salvador Sánchez Cerén convened with President Barack Obama.

The high-level invitation to Washington signals deepening ties between Trump and Bukele, who have expressed mutual admiration for each other on key issues like law enforcement and crime.

In June 2024, during Bukele’s second term inauguration, notable figures from the president’s MAGA movement, including Donald Trump Jr., attended the ceremony, underscoring a intensifying ideological alignment.

After Trump’s inauguration, Trump and Bukele spoke about joining efforts to curb illegal immigration and dismantle transnational gangs. A month later, he extended the offer to accept deportees from the U.S., regardless of their nationality.

Unclear is whether Bukele will use the White House meeting to discuss Trump’s 10% tariff on all trading partners, including El Salvador.

Another possible meeting topic is Trump’s idea of sending American citizens convicted of a crime to El Salvador, a prospect he floated to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday.

“These would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly, and these are violent repeat offenders in American streets,” Leavitt said when asked about the idea at Tuesday’s press briefing. “The president has said, if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that. He’s not sure. We are not sure if there is.”

The Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to facilitate the deportation of individuals to El Salvador, designating Tren de Aragua members as an “invading force.” Families of some of the men who were sent to the country’s CECOT prison have said that their loved ones were wrongly accused.

On Monday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a federal judge’s order to halt the flights due to a venue issue of where the lawsuit was filed.

The high court also said the deportees must be able to challenge their gang designations before being sent to Bukele’s high-security prison, meaning that future deportations could require lengthy court hearings before they are finalized.

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