Since President Trump’s first term, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has called the United States “not just a partner but a friend.” At their 2019 bilateral meeting, Trump returned the gesture by praising Bukele’s handling of MS-13, an international gang with close ties to both El Salvador and the U.S. [1]. In recent months, Salvadoran-U.S. relations have been put under the spotlight as the Central American country has become the destination for a subset of undocumented immigrants described by Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem as “the worst of the worst” [2]. Specifically, the two countries developed a significant working relationship as President Trump began to utilize El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) to house non-citizens designated as gang members [3, 4]. However, even before the two countries began this relationship on immigration policy, El Salvador under Bukele provided a blueprint for actualizing much of Trump’s professed agenda to strengthen the executive through a skepticism of due process rights, limiting other branches of government’s power to check the president, and serving more than the constitutionally allowed term.

Due Process Rights

The most notable trend uniting Bukele and Trump’s shared vision is a willingness to claim special circumstances call for special legal due process. In 2022, Bukele suspended key portions of the Salvadoran constitution to deal with the country’s endemic gang violence. In 2015 and 2016, largely due to the presence of the gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18, El Salvador had the highest homicide rate of any country in the world [5]. By the time Bukele assumed the presidency in 2019, the murder rate had been cut in half, but it remained among the world’s most severe [6]. In 2022, after a weekend of extreme gang violence, Bukele declared a “state of exception,” allowing him to suspend three parts of the Salvadoran constitution: the right to be informed of their detention and receive legal assistance, the right to not be detained for more than 72 hours before being brought before a judge, and the right to privacy in communication [7]. Although the state of exception was initially advertised as a temporary month-long measure, it has been extended upwards of 30 times since 2022 [8]. Another tool Bukele’s party has granted security forces is mass trials where up to 900 people can be tried at once, which diminishes the accused’s ability to argue their individual innocence [9]. The state of exception (S.O.E.) has allowed Bukele to crack down on gang violence through mass incarceration with a much lower threshold for detainment. All of these factors have increased the ability of the state to hold suspected gang members on minimal grounds while decreasing their ability to challenge their incarceration in the courts. Under the S.O.E., more than 85,000 people have been detained and 3 percent of El Salvador’s male population is behind bars [10, 11]. Where El Salvador used to lead the world in homicide, it now leads the world in incarceration rates [12]. 

While Trump’s policies are a far cry from El Salvador’s mass incarceration, he has shown a willingness to challenge the rights of non-citizens to due process. The Supreme Court has historically held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment applies even to undocumented immigrants by arguing that “aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings… encompassed in due process of law” [13]. Despite this precedent, Trump has invoked special circumstances to summarily deport individuals and bypass the typical procedure requiring final removal notices by immigration judges [14]. The key to this accelerated deportation process lies in Trump’s designation of the gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as Foreign Terrorist Organizations [15]. Trump subsequently claimed that Tren De Aragua, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, is “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” into the United States. Therefore, under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the executive is allowed to deport those gang members as “alien enemies” [16]. On this point, Trump and Bukele’s rhetoric overlaps by invoking special protocols to bypass the due process rights of alleged “terrorists” that are often cited as wasting precious time and endangering the country. Additionally, Trump may still go further in pursuit of his deportation agenda. Trump, during his Oval Office appearance with Bukele, also floated the idea of deporting U.S. citizens, and his Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller said they were considering the option of suspending habeas corpus—the legal procedure that allows individuals to challenge their detention [17, 18].

Limited Checks on the Executive

Despite these efforts, Trump has received pushback on his deportation agenda from the courts so far. On March 16, 2025, Judge James Boasberg ordered two planes with Venezuelan immigrants to be returned to the U.S. so that the deportees could appeal their cases [19]. Another U.S. District Court judge, Paula Xinis, ordered the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who government lawyers said was deported as a result of an “administrative error” [20]. In response, Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg on Truth Social, invoking his electoral mandate to act on immigration [21]. The threat of impeachment drew ire from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who made a rare public rebuke of the President, saying it was well established that impeachment was not an acceptable response to disagreement over a court decision [22]. As of this date, the Trump administration has continued to resist the ruling, with Homeland Security Director Noem saying there is no situation where Garcia would be returned to the U.S. [23]. 

From early on in his term, Bukele has also sought to avoid the ability of the judicial branch to block his executive actions. In 2020, Bukele issued COVID-19 measures for a mandatory lockdown and allowed police to detain any violators. El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled that the authorities were “‘constitutionally forbidden’ from holding people in a containment center solely for violating the lockdown rules.” However, Bukele refused to comply, continuing to detain those taken in on suspicion of not obeying the lockdown order [24]. Later on in his term, once Bukele’s Nueva Ideas party earned a legislative supermajority, Bukele further reduced the independence of the judiciary. Working with El Salvador’s congress, he replaced the country’s officially independent Attorney General and all five justices of the nation’s highest court by alleging that they had acted unconstitutionally by ruling against him during the COVID pandemic [25]. After replacing the Supreme Court, Bukele’s party passed legislation forcing judges over the age of 60 nationwide to retire and mandating that their replacements be appointed by the new Supreme Court [26]. 

Serving Extra-Constitutional Terms

In 2021, the newly constituted El Salvadoran Supreme Court also went against precedent and ruled that Bukele could run for a second term in the next election. Previously, in 2014, it had ruled that a president would have to be out of power for 10 years before he or she could run again. The 2021 ruling allowed Bukele to step back from the presidency into an interim role six months before the election, so it was not technically a consecutive term forbidden by the constitution. Accordingly, in 2024, Bukele became the first Salvadoran president to be reelected since the end of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992. In response, the U.S. embassy in El Salvador said that the ruling was “clearly contrary to the Salvadoran constitution” [27].   

Trump has also entertained the idea of serving a third term, contrary to the 22nd Amendment. The Trump Organization recently released “Trump 2028” hats, advertising a third term. Despite recently denying wanting to serve a third term, Trump claimed only a couple of months earlier that he was “not joking” about the prospect, specifying that there were “methods which you could do it” [28, 29]. For example, Trump responded that “one method” was for J.D. Vance to run with Trump as his vice president, then step down, allowing Trump to assume the presidency. In the absence of a clear successor for the G.O.P., this option remains persuasive to some of his supporters. One Republican congressman, Andy Ogles of Tennessee recently proposed an amendment to allow Trump to run for a third term while former advisor Steve Bannon recently predicted that Trump will serve a third term [30]. Although only time will tell if Trump decides to run for a third term, he has not consistently been satisfied with the two terms that have been the norm and constitutional law of the U.S. since the 1950s. 

While the Trump administration has challenged allies across the world with the threat of tariffs, the United States is pursuing a closer relationship with El Salvador. Utilizing Salvadoran prisons allows the Trump administration to avoid deportees’ legal challenges and benefit from El Salvador’s suspension of due process rights. At the same time, Bukele remains incredibly popular among Salvadorans, enjoying an 80 percent approval rating [31]. With the stark 80 percent decline in crime in a country formerly known as the “murder capital of the world,” it’s not difficult to understand this popularity.  However, 60 percent of the same Salvadorans report being afraid to voice criticisms of the government. One Salvadoran woman interviewed by The New Yorker during the state of exception said, “Until it happens to you, it doesn’t matter what happens to someone else” [32]. Despite their collaboration on the issue of immigration, El Salvador should be no role model for a U.S. administration interested in sustaining the safeguards that characterize its liberal democracy.