GUATEMALA CITY — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was exploring whether he can move forward with El Salvador’s offer to accept and jail violent American criminals in the “most severe cases” even as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both say it raises clear legal issues.

Rubio reached an unusual agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a day earlier that the Central American country would accept U.S. deportees of any nationality, including American citizens and legal residents who are imprisoned for violent crimes.

“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “I don’t know if we do or not, we’re looking at that right now.”

At a news conference earlier in San Jose with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, Rubio said there were “obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution.”

But Rubio noted that it was “a very generous offer. No one’s ever made an offer like that — and to outsource, at a fraction of the cost, at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have in the United States.”

Immigration — a Trump administration priority — was again the topic of the day during Rubio’s first foreign trip as America’s top diplomat. On his five-country Central America tour, he has faced major upheaval at the U.S. Agency for International Development, leaving many at the aid agency and the State Department fearful for their jobs.

While Rubio has been overseas this week, USAID staffers and Democratic lawmakers were blocked from its Washington headquarters after Elon Musk, who is running a budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, announced Trump had agreed with him to shut the aid agency.

Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs worldwide shut down after Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance after taking office. Rubio later offered a waiver for life-saving programs, but confusion over what is exempt from stop-work orders — and fear of losing U.S. aid permanently — is still freezing aid and development work globally.

Amid the turmoil back home, Rubio and Chaves spoke of immigration and security challenges that Costa Rica faces as it has become not just a transit country for migrants headed to the U.S. but also a destination as thousands of Nicaraguans since that country cracked down on opposition starting in 2018.

That is after meeting in San Salvador on Monday with Bukele, who confirmed the deportation offer in a post on X, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.”

The State Department describes El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons as “harsh and dangerous.” Its country information webpage says, “In many facilities, provisions for sanitation, potable water, ventilation, temperature control, and lighting are inadequate or nonexistent.”