MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Reform UK in talks with El Salvador over sending foreign prisoners to Bukele's jails

The precedent invoked by Reform UK is the arrangement reached by Donald Trump's administration with El Salvador

Britain's Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, has opened contacts with the government of El Salvador to transfer foreign prisoners to jails in that country should it win the next United Kingdom general election, which must be held by 2029 at the latest. The report was published on Monday by the newspaper The Sun and has not been confirmed by San Salvador.

The party's home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, set out its prisons policy on Sunday night. “We will deport all foreign nationals from our jails. If their home countries won't take them back we will send them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo,” he said. Yusuf put the number of foreign nationals in British prisons at more than 10,000 and argued that the space freed up would keep dangerous offenders behind bars.
According to The Sun, a delegation headed by party chairman Lee Anderson will travel to Central America in the coming months to assess the feasibility of the scheme, which would involve renting prison places funded by the United Kingdom. The announcement also includes creating 12,000 places through temporary prisons and ending early release for those convicted of serious offenses.

The proposal emerges as Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces criticism over his early release program, which takes effect in October and would affect some 5,000 inmates. Burnham took office in July following the resignation of Keir Starmer, without a general election.

The precedent invoked by Reform UK is the arrangement reached by Donald Trump's administration with El Salvador. In March 2025, the United States deported 238 Venezuelans to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), opened in 2023 in Tecoluca with a stated official capacity of 40,000 inmates. As MercoPress reported in April 2025, President Nayib Bukele then announced plans to double the capacity of the facility, which held more than 15,000 prisoners.

CECOT is the emblem of Bukele's security policy and also its most contested element. Cells have no windows and family visits are not permitted, and human rights organizations have documented arbitrary detentions and deaths in custody under the state of exception in force since March 2022, which has produced more than 91,000 detentions without judicial order. In April 2026, 413 of the 486 defendants in the largest trial in Salvadoran history against the Mara Salvatrucha leadership appeared by video link from the prison, as MercoPress reported.

Farage is seeking on Thursday to regain the Clacton seat he vacated in July to trigger a by-election. His resignation came amid an investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner into an alleged undeclared gift of five million pounds, on which no findings have been reached.