At a press conference on Monday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage outlined a proposal for all foreign prisoners in Britain to serve their sentences abroad, highlighting El Salvador’s notorious Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) as a possible destination. Farage said that Reform MP and Chairman Lee Anderson would start talks with the administration of President Nayib Bukele — the Millennial Salvadoran leader who has called himself “the world’s coolest dictator”.

Farage’s proposal of sending prisoners abroad came in response to Labour’s early release scheme amid overcrowding in prisons. Some 10,134 foreign nationals are being held in custody in England and Wales, representing 12% of the inmate population. But the problem is that Bukele’s law enforcement policy is known for its extremely heavy-handed approach, which has drawn widespread criticism. If Farage were to go ahead with his party’s proposal, the optics of cooperating with Bukele would likely reflect badly on him.

This idea isn’t without precedent, as El Salvador has received prisoners in the past. Last year, the Trump administration sent 238 Venezuelans migrants with alleged gang ties or criminal records to El Salvador. Salvadoran officials posted videos to social media of shackled migrants being forced from their flights and taken to CECOT, where they were stuffed into overcrowded cells. The flights arrived despite a court order blocking their journey. “Oopsie… Too late,” Bukele said on social media, trolling his critics. The Venezuelans sent to CECOT alleged they were subjected to abuse and sexual violence. They were repatriated in July 2025.

For Reform UK, the policy is no doubt controversial. Holding foreign national offenders in El Salvador could cost half as much as incarcerating them in the UK, while freeing up prison space, Farage said. But he downplayed the squalor and stories of abuse coming from CECOT. El Salvador would be required to maintain “British standards” on matters such as overcrowding, lighting and open-air time.

But a lack of standards, humiliation and harsh conditions have all been the point of Bukele’s punitive populism. The Salvadoran President built the “impossible to escape” CECOT for 40,000 inmates in 2022 and then filled it with gangsters after declaring a state of emergency earlier that year. His government cracked down on the 18 Street and MS-13 gangs, which terrorized neighborhoods, ran extortion rackets and contributed to one of the highest murder rates in the world during the 2010s.

As a result of the government crackdown, El Salvador locked up an estimated 2% of its adult population, with due process suspended in the state of emergency and law enforcement allegedly arresting suspects to meet detention quotas, driving down its homicide rate to the among the lowest in the hemisphere, according to Bukele. Salvadoran human rights organization Cristosal estimated in a report that abusive conditions such as the denial of food and water, along with physical and psychological torture, have led to the deaths of more than 400 detainees since 2022.

The mano dura (heavy hand) approach to crime has won fans across the hemisphere, though no leader has been able to replicate it. Polls show Bukele remains widely popular — his approval rating has topped 90% at times — though sources in the country say grumblings have emerged over Salvadorans still being deported from the United States, despite Bukele’s closeness with the Trump administration. The Venezuelans locked up in CECOT were out of sight, but never out of mind thanks to Bukele’s trolling, US media interest and human rights groups. For instance, the story of Kilmar Ábreu García, the Maryland man who was sent to CECOT due to an “administrative error”, captured intense media and political attention.

While Bukele’s approach is harsh, his voters appear to approve. The problem for Reform UK is that sending foreign nationals to El Salvador’s prisons will put them in physical danger — a reality that would likely make a large proportion of the wider population feel squeamish. Farage may see El Salvador as a simple solution to foreign nationals taking up space in British prisons. But CECOT won’t match “British standards”, or even come close.