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President Nayib Bukele "has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world," Rubio said at a signing ceremony for an unrelated civil nuclear agreement with El Salvador's foreign minister.

"He's also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they're U.S. citizens or legal residents," Rubio said. He had just met with Bukele at his lakeside country house outside San Salvador for several hours.

After Rubio spoke, a U.S. official said the Trump administration had no current plans to try to deport American citizens, but said Bukele's offer was significant. The U.S. government cannot deport American citizens and such a move would be met with significant legal challenges.

Rubio was visiting El Salvador to press a friendly government to do more to meet Trump administration demands for a major crackdown on immigration amid turmoil in Washington over the status of the government's main foreign development agency.

He arrived in San Salvador shortly after watching a U.S.-funded deportation flight with 43 migrants leave from Panama for Colombia. That came a day after Rubio delivered a warning to Panama that unless the government moved immediately to reduce or eliminate China's presence at the Panama Canal, the U.S. would act to do so.

Migration, though, was the main issue of the day, as it will be for the next stops on Rubio's five-nation Central American tour of Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic after Panama and El Salvador.

President Donald Trump's administration prioritizes stopping people from making the journey to the United States and has worked with regional countries to boost immigration enforcement on their borders as well as to accept deportees from the United States.

The agreement Rubio described for El Salvador to accept foreign nationals arrested in the United States for violating U.S. immigration laws is known as a "safe third country" agreement. That would mean the U.S. could deport non-Salvadorean migrants to El Salvador.

Officials have suggested this might be an option for Venezuelan gang members convicted of crimes in the United States should Venezuela refuse to accept them, but Rubio said Bukele's offer was for detainees of any nationality.

Rubio said Bukele then went further and said his country was willing to accept and to jail U.S. citizens or legal residents convicted of and imprisoned for violent crimes.

Human rights activists have warned that El Salvador lacks a consistent policy for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and that such an agreement might not be limited to violent criminals.

Manuel Flores, the secretary general of the leftist opposition party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, criticized the "safe third country" plan, saying it would signal that the region is Washington's "backyard to dump the garbage."

The deportation flight Rubio watched being loaded in Panama City was carrying migrants detained by Panamanian authorities after illegally crossing the Darien Gap from Colombia. The State Department says such deportations send a message of deterrence. The U.S. provided Panama with financial assistance to the tune of almost $2.7 million in flights and tickets since an agreement was signed to fund them.

Rubio was on the tarmac for the departure of the flight, which was taking 32 men and 11 women back to Colombia. It's unusual for a secretary of state to personally witness such a law enforcement operation, especially in front of cameras.

"Mass migration is one of the great tragedies in the modern era," Rubio said, speaking afterward in a nearby building. "It impacts countries throughout the world. We recognize that many of the people who seek mass migration are often victims and victimized along the way, and it's not good for anyone."