Matt Gaetz would oversee US prisons as AG. He thinks El Salvador’s hardline lockups are a model

Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general has been open about his admiration for El Salvador’s callous handling of criminals, including at the Cecot detention center.

As he stood inside the echoing hall of the prison, Matt Gaetz seemed impressed. “There’s a lot more discipline in this prison than we see in a lot of the prisons in the United States,” said Gaetz, then a congressman, now announced as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for US attorney general. It was July, and Gaetz — who will oversee the Federal Bureau of Prisons if he becomes attorney general — was visiting El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where gang leaders and murderers are locked up and from which they are never released. The prison is a concrete manifestation of the hardline rule of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who is often berated by human rights groups for flouting norms but largely credited inside his country for returning safety to the streets. “This is the solution” for El Salvador, Gaetz added, in a video released by Bukele. “We think the good ideas in El Salvador actually have legs and can go to other places and help other people be safe and secure and hopeful and prosperous.” Last month, CNN was the first major US news organization to be granted access to Cecot on a private tour, seeing the recently built fortress where both convicts and some men still facing trial spend 23½ hours a day in bleak group cells, eat a bland meatless diet and have just 30 minutes a day for exercise or Bible class.