The Deal: Trump Bukele & The Gangs of El Salvador

*N/A

Status

Released

Production

PBS

Aired

2026-04-07

The Deal: Trump Bukele & The Gangs of El Salvador

Three months after President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 and began his major immigration crackdown, he held a White House sit-down with a popular Latin American leader who had once called himself the world's coolest dictator. As the documentary explores, Bukele opened the doors of the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT to planeloads of mostly Venezuelan U.S. deportees that the Trump administration had swept up and accused of being gang members. Later reporting would reveal that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. or proven gang affiliations.