A political party in the United Kingdom explores an agreement with El Salvador to transfer foreign prisoners

The police guard the facilities where alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, also known as MS-13, attend a public hearing in a mass trial —after charges against 486 suspected gang members for more than 47,000 crimes committed between 2012 and 2022, according to the prosecution— at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador. April 23, 2026. REUTERS/Jose CabezasThe Reform UK party opened contacts with the Government of El Salvador to rent places in its prisons and incarcerate there the more than 10,000 foreigners serving sentences in prisons in England and Wales, as revealed this Monday by The Sun and taken up by the EFE agency. The cost of imprisoning a prisoner in Salvadoran territory would be half of what it costs in the United Kingdom, according to Nigel Farage in a press conference in London. The plan was presented on Sunday night by the party’s Interior spokesperson, Zia Yusuf: “We will deport all foreigners from our prisons. If their countries of origin do not accept them, we will send them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo. We will use the space thus freed to ensure that dangerous criminals remain where they should be: behind bars.” According to the note, the proposal specifically targets those convicted of murder, homicide, rape, and serious violence. It would only affect prisoners already convicted, not those in pretrial detention, which account for nearly a third of the total, clarified a party spokesperson. The party’s leader, Lee Anderson, will head the delegation traveling to Central America in the coming months to assess the viability of the agreement. He will be accompanied by Vanessa Frake, former security and operations director of the London prison Wormwood Scrubs and current Reform UK justice advisor. The leader of the British Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, attends a press conference in London, United Kingdom, on August 10, 2026. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleFarage specified that Lithuania, Estonia, and Kosovo are also on the list of alternative destinations. However, the Estonian government responded to Metro that this option was “discarded” and that it does not contemplate “any additional prison place rental agreement with other governments.” The direct precedent is the agreement that the Donald Trump administration signed with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in March 2025, whereby Washington transferred USD 4.76 million to San Salvador to incarcerate deported Venezuelans at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the maximum-security mega-prison inaugurated in 2023 in Tecoluca, San Vicente. Reform UK claims that its deportees would be convicted prisoners of serious crimes, unlike what happened with the American agreement. Farage argued that Salvadoran prisons should not be judged solely by images broadcast on television. The CECOT in El Salvador was designed for 40,000 inmates and became a symbol of Bukele’s “tough on gangs” policy. View of the CECOT facilities. The El Salvador Prosecutor’s Office seeks cumulative and historical sentences for gang leaders detained in this maximum-security center (Courtesy of the Press Secretariat). According to the EFE note, the proposal comes at a time of maximum political tension around British prisons. Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces ongoing controversy over his plan for early release of inmates, designed to alleviate the capacity collapse of the system. After a wave of criticism, Burnham excluded from the scheme those convicted of rape, serious sexual abuse of minors, and grooming cases. Still, about 5,000 prisoners will be released starting in October after serving only half of their sentence, confirmed Justice Secretary Alex Norris. The original figure was 6,000.