As world leaders scramble to get the ear of US President Donald Trump, the self-described "world's coolest dictator" just scored a coveted White House meeting.
El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele is the first Latin American leader to get an invite to the Oval Office since Trump's return.
"You are helping us out, and we appreciate it," Trump said to the young leader when they met on Monday, local time.
Bukele has become central to the Trump administration's deportation blitz, accepting hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members into his prison system.
He's also become central in a legal stand-off over a Salvadoran migrant who was deported and jailed due to an "administrative error", and who Bukele says he will not release.
So, who is Nayib Bukele?
How Bukele clinched his grip on power
In 10 short years, El Salvador went from being known as the "murder capital of the world" to hitting a record low 114 homicides in 2024.
It's also now the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, all thanks to its 43-year-old president.
Nayib Bukele swept to power in 2019 after promising to crack down on violent gangs that had terrorised El Salvador for decades.
A couple of years later, he updated his Twitter bio to "world's coolest dictator".
In 2022, he declared a state of emergency, giving authorities the power to arrest anyone suspected of gang affiliation without telling them why, informing them of their rights, or allowing them access to a lawyer.
Amnesty International says hundreds have since died in state custody from causes including beatings, torture and a lack of medical care.
Many have disappeared into the prison system, held for years without trial and without contact with their families.
Even the president admits that some of the 100,000 people who have ended up in his prisons are innocent, dismissing them as "collateral damage".
Bukele has kept the state of emergency in place for more than three years, by renewing it every time it hits the 30-day limit outlined in the constitution.
He's also circumvented the constitutional ban on presidents serving a second consecutive term, by briefly "standing aside" from his presidency, then running for re-election and winning in 2024.
But while his brutal crackdown has attracted criticism from human rights groups, it's been popular among Salvadorans.
He's now the most popular leader in Latin America, with sky-high approval ratings regularly hitting about 80 per cent.
He's also earned one very powerful fan — US President Donald Trump.
Taking Trump's deportees
In March, Trump deported scores of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, using the wartime Alien Enemies Act.
They are among more than 200 deportees incarcerated in El Salvador's "CECOT" megaprison.
In return, the United States is paying El Salvador roughly $US6 million ($9.5 million).
When a federal judge tried to block Donald Trump's use of the Act and ordered the deportation flights to return to the US, Bukele posted on social media:
"Oopsie … Too late."
The move then sparked a weeks-long court battle over the legality of the deportations.
The men were deported without standard due process, and doubts about some of their alleged gang affiliations have been raised by immigration advocates and loved ones.
But the Supreme Court last week ruled the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants using the Alien Enemies Act for now, overturning the lower court's ruling.
Pushback after 'administrative error'
In a separate case last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man deported to El Salvador after what the government called an "administrative error".
Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador's gang violence as a teenager, advocates say, and in 2019 a judge gave him protection from being returned.
He held a US work permit and was working as a sheet metal apprentice just outside Washington DC, where he lived with his wife and three children.
Lawyers for the government said they would comply with the order but have yet to detail the steps they're taking to bring him back, merely declaring him "alive and secure" but "detained pursuant to the sovereign domestic authority of El Salvador" in a court filing on Saturday.
During Monday's White House meeting, Trump threw to his advisers to explain the administration's position.
"No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
"I don't understand what the confusion is. This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country."
Bukele was asked if he would return Abrego Garcia to the United States or release him from custody. He described the question as "preposterous".
"How can I return him today?" he asked.
"I smuggle him into the United States? I'm not going to do it … I don't have the power to return him to the United States.
"Yeah, but I'm not releasing I mean, we're not very fond of releasing terrorists to our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world to the safest country in the Western hemisphere and you want us to go back into releasing criminals."
Jailing Americans in El Salvador?
Trump has also said he's open to sending US citizens to prisons in El Salvador if they've committed violent crimes
"If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem," he said.
Such a policy would likely face legal and constitutional barriers, but Trump said: "We're studying the laws right now."
"I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people, really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in."
Trump also indicated El Salvador would continue to be a key part of his immigration crackdown, saying he wanted to send "as many as possible" to the country.
"And I just asked the president, this massive complex that he built, jail complex. I said: 'Can you build some more of them? Please?'"
