Prisoners spend 23.5 hours a day locked in their cells, with a brief, daily 30-minute window for exercise or religious activities in a central hallway.

Under U.S. immigration law, a country such as El Salvador can accept someone deported from the U.S. who isn’t a citizen of that country if the person’s homeland refuses to accept them, says Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former homeland security official under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised President Nayib Bukele’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” proposal to accept any convicted criminal deported by the United States.