Experts are concerned that criminals will be the big winners from El Salvador’s ground-breaking move.
It is the result of 18 months of research into the"war on drugs"that has cost billions of American taxpayers'dollars without ending violence and corruption.
The decision effectively strips their legal status,rendering them deportable and leaving their 200,000 children in limbo.
Any efforts at reducing inmates'contact were blown away in El Salvador when authorities crammed prisoners together in prison yards while searching their cells.
Alexander Contreras said he was frustrated because he knew the clock was ticking and thought he might have to drop a class or even miss the whole school year.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has urged the Central American country's coastal population to move to higher ground.
Tania Vanessa Avalos arrived in El Salvador with a family friend who had gone with them on their ill-fated journey to the United States.
Tania Vanessa Avalos,whose husband and daughter drowned while trying to cross from Mexico into the US,wanted a safer future,but now she is working to repatriate their bodies.
The mother of a man who drowned alongside his 23-month-old daughter on US border says she finds a heartbreaking photograph of their bodies hard to look at.
All four candidates promised to end corruption,stamp out gang violence and create more jobs,with crushing crime at the top of the agenda.
Taiwan's foreign minister,Joseph Wu,accuses El Salvador of demanding money as China engages in diplomatic one-upmanship.