The El Salvador Project: A Reform UK Solution for the Dispersal of Foreign Nationals from Britain’s Prisons
Inspired by a Trump administration initiative, Reform UK has come up with a potential solution to the vexatious problem of how best to deal with incarcerated foreign nationals, a total of 10,134 of whom are in prisons in England and Wales as of June 2026. These individuals, only around 6,500 of whom have actually been sentenced, are seen as taking up much-needed space in the overcrowded British prison system, compelling the government to continue with its programme for the early release of incarcerated people from custody. While some convicted foreign nationals could expect to be deported to their countries of origin to serve out the remainders of their prison terms, others may have to be sent to a third country in the absence of a viable alternative, especially if they are stateless or if their homeland refuses to have them back . In this context, El Salvador seems a promising destination for Britain’s unwanted prisoners. To take matters forward, Reform UK chairman Lee Anderson will be visiting El Salvador in the near future, in the company of former prison governor Vanessa Frake, to discuss the party’s plans with the leadership of that country.
Reform UK’s proposals are in an early stage of gestation and it remains to be seen whether they will ever come to fruition. While we await further developments, it seems opportune to dwell on the choice of El Salvador, the smallest and most densely populated of the seven countries of Central America, and also the only one that lacks a Caribbean coast. According to the Reform UK document titled ‘Keep Criminals Behind Bars’, the cost of housing prisoners in El Salvador is likely to be half the amount required to keep them incarcerated in Britain. This calculation appears to be an extrapolation from the $20,000 per annum it costs to keep an American prisoner in that country.
The politically unstable nation of El Salvador descended into chaos during 12 years of civil war between 1980 and 1992, when the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN; Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) waged a guerrilla campaign against the government, which had the backing of the right-wing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA; National Republican Alliance). Many atrocities and abuses of human rights came to characterise the civil war, which was the direct result of pervasive socioeconomic inequality in El Salvador. Despite the cessation of hostilities, the country was plagued by gang-related violence, occasioned by the deportation of members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (18th Street) gangs from the US in the aftermath of the civil war. Barrio 18 was formed by Mexican-Americans in the 1960s, and MS-13 by Salvadorans in the 1980s. Both gangs originated in Los Angeles. Mano Dura (iron fist) policies failed to suppress MS-13 and Barrio 18 in El Salvador until the 2020s.
The domination of FMLN and ARENA finally ended when Nayib Bukele won the presidency on 3 February 2019. He had fought the election on an anti-corruption and tough-on-crime ticket, supported by Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (GANA; Grand Alliance of National Unity), thereby becoming the youngest elected president in Latin American history. Bukele had served as mayor of the capital city of San Salvador from 2015 onward, where he gained a reputation as a moderniser and helped develop the city’s infrastructure. After his expulsion from the FMLN, he had founded his own party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), in October 2017, but was unable to campaign under his party banner owing to administrative reasons.
El Salvador faced a major crisis on 25 March 2022, when members of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) went on a rampage. Within two days, 87 people had been killed, in the heaviest loss of life since the civil war. Bukele introduced a one-month state of emergency (régimen de excepción) on 27 March, suspending many constitutional rights (freedom of movement, freedom of association, the right of legal representation) as he clamped down on the gangs. The state of emergency has been renewed at monthly intervals ever since. Bukele’s strategy proved successful as violent crime and the homicide rate fell dramatically to an all-time low. El Salvador is now one of the safest countries in Latin America. El Salvador’s battle against gang-related crime has seen the introduction of mass trials of gangsters, the imposition of “maximum penalties”, and a policy of mass incarceration. Arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and deaths in custody are the price to pay in this battle against gang-related crime.
Bukelismo gained much support in Latin America, and, most importantly, caught the eye of Donald Trump. On 3 February 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio concluded a deal with Nayib Bukele, whereby El Salvador would take in people deported from US jails, irrespective of their nationality, and house them in the country’s mega-jail, Centro de Contenimiento del Terrorismo (CECOT; Terrorism Confinement Centre). This maximum-security prison in Tecoluca, where conditions are unforgiving, opened for business in January 2023. CECOT covers 57 acres and its eight pavilions can house up to a total of 40,000 inmates, making it the largest prison in Latin America.
El Salvador has a proven track-record of dealing with gang-related crime, in the course of which it has built mega-prisons, with surplus capacity potentially available to rent. Reform UK’s proposal to deport unplaced convicted foreign nationals to Salvador’s prisons at the cost of the British tax-payer raises important moral and ethical questions, to which there can be no black-and-white answers. Deportation to El Salvador is not just a simple matter of transferring people between equivalent prisons to serve out their sentences, as Salvadoran jails appear to be much harsher environments than their British counterparts. It also must be remembered that incarcerated foreign nationals are a more diverse group than Salvadoran gang members, having been imprisoned for a number of different reasons. It is interesting to see how this particular measure will be taken forward, and in particular whether it eventually turns out to yet another instance of crowd-pleasing and vote-winning rhetoric, in the manner of the earlier Rwanda policy, or maybe not. Only time will tell.
Ashis Banerjee