While U.S. President Donald Trump signed his signature reconciliation bill on the Fourth of July, his ally, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, shared a two-minute video promoting his country’s prison system, including the mega prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), and captioned it: “The best prison system in the world.”
Note: The Trump administration sent more than 200 undocumented immigrants (claiming they were all criminal gang members) from the U.S. to CECOT, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who when released and returned to the U.S. said he was beaten and tortured while at the Salvadoran prison.
President Bukele denied the claims and wrote of Abrego Garcia on social media: “If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture? Why would he gain weight? Why are there no bruises, or even dark circles under his eyes?”
The best prison system in the world. pic.twitter.com/rxSyu2et2C
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 4, 2025
The video (above) boasts of the prison system’s reintegration program which they call the ‘Zero Leisure Plan’ and claim is “one of the best in the world.”
With imagery of inmates at work in the prison, the video reports: “Over 48,000 inmates who are not gang members work to reduce their sentences and benefit our society.”
The list is broken down with data: 6,500 inmates work in the textile production workshop, 6,000 work in the shoe shop, 15,000 work outside on construction projects including schools and hospitals, the list goes on and on.
Toward the end of the video, it is announced: “And now, we have our own symphony orchestra.”
The video ends noting that “nearly all of the 48,000 inmates in the Zero Leisure Plan are taking advantage of the second chance that the government is offering them and “all for the benefit of El Salvador.”
While many Trump supporters in America are responding to the video with praise and calling for the U.S. to replicate the Zero Leisure Plan, there are also a few voices of dissent.
As Pablo Luna Gutiérrez of Colombia replied: “President, @nayibbukele, a Head of State should not feel proud of building prisons; quite the opposite, social policies that address structural problems so that people don’t end up in prisons. Attack the causes, not just the consequences!”