Who is Nayib Bukele? El Salvador president and Trump ally on US visit

President Donald Trump welcomed his Salvadoran counterpart, Nayib Bukele, to the White House on Monday, cementing a controversial partnership that has placed El Salvador at the centre of the US administration’s aggressive deportation policy.
The visit comes amid growing scrutiny over a deal through which El Salvador accepted more than 200 Venezuelan migrants deported by the US since March. The Trump administration alleged that many of them were linked to violent gangs. The deportees have been sent to Zacatecoluca, El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, just outside San Salvador.
The Trump administration, however, provided little concrete evidence to support claims that those deported are gang members, Time reported. The identities of the individuals have not been released yet and concerns are mounting after it emerged that one man, an American resident from Maryland was wrongly deported and has not yet been allowed back into the country despite court orders.
Trump praised Bukele’s efforts in comments to reporters on Sunday, “He’s taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn’t be able to take care of from cost standpoint,” Trump said. “And he’s doing really, he’s been amazing. We have some very bad people in that prison. People that should have never been allowed into our country.”
Bukele, who gained popularity back home for his fierce crackdown on El Salvador’s powerful street gangs, has embraced his new role as a key partner in the US deportation agenda. Since 2022, his administration has arrested more than 84,000 people as part of his three year crackdown on gangs.
Under the agreement, the US is said to pay approximately $6 million for El Salvador to detain the Venezuelan migrants for a year. When a US judge attempted to halt one such deportation flight mid-air, Bukele posted on social media: “Oopsie ... too late.”
The legal basis for the deportations was approved by the Supreme Court’s recent green light allowing Trump to invoke the alien enemies act, an obscure law from the 18th century, so long as deportees are given a court hearing prior to removal.
On Sunday, the secretary of state Marco Rubio confirmed the arrival of ten more deportees in El Salvador, whom US authorities allege are affiliated with MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua criminal networks.