San Salvador, El Salvador - El Salvador's president has become a key partner for US President Donald Trump's campaign to deport migrants, with both men hoping to reap the political benefits.

Through a rollout of slickly produced videos featuring chained and tattooed men roughly escorted off planes, Nayib Bukele has won the US president's attention.

"Thank you President Bukele, of El Salvador, for taking the criminals that were so stupidly allowed, by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, to enter our country, and giving them such a wonderful place to live!" Trump posted Monday on his TruthSocial platform.

His comments were accompanied by the latest video posted by Bukele featuring heavily staged, militaristic clips of migrants arriving in the Central American nation.

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Trump's appreciation was quickly reciprocated: "Grateful for your words, President Trump. Onward together!" Bukele posted.

To cement the relationship, the pair will meet at the White House this month, with Bukele promising to bring "several cans of Diet Coke" for his famously soda-thirsty host.

But behind the hardman camaraderie lies raw politics.

For Bukele, accepting hundreds of deported people from the US "consolidates his image as the leader who transformed security in El Salvador," said Migration Policy Institute analyst Diego Chaves-Gonzalez.

Since coming to power in 2019, Bukele dispensed with warrants and due process and jailed almost 2% of the population. He has brought the murder rate down from more than 6,500 a year to just 114, according to official figures.

Security remains central to the "iron fist" political brand that makes Bukele popular among many Salvadorans – with a domestic approval rating hovering above 85%.

Detaining people deported by Trump at El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) has not just made Bukele a friend in the White House, but also allowed the 43-year-old president to put the signature 40,000-prisoner jail on full display.

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The sprawling facility's austere concrete walls and army of masked guards have featured prominently in videos produced by Bukele's government.

Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even visited CECOT, posing in front of a cell overflowing with seemingly dead-eyed men.

For some analysts, the brutality of such images is the point.

Both Bukele and Trump have enthusiastically shared pictures of prisoners shackled, shorn, and manhandled while simultaneously highlighting and rejecting objections from judges and opponents.

In that sense, Trump appears to be echoing Bukele's political imagery to appeal to his own base of US voters.

"It is a sign that Trump is interested in 'iron fist' propaganda and disobeying judicial rulings," said Salvadoran political analyst Napoleon Campos.

A recent CBS poll showed 53% of voters, and an overwhelming majority of Republicans, approve of Trump's handling of immigration – a higher approval rating than he receives on the economy.

Aside from political benefits for both men, there is a potential security and economic boon for Bukele.

His government received $6 million for taking deported people, a fee that Bukele described as "a very low fee for them, but a high one for us."

He also received more than 20 allegedly high-ranking members of El Salvador's most notorious gang MS-13, who were being held in the US.

Bukele claimed that would help "finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors."

And there is the promise of US investment in El Salvador, a country which still has a per capita income comparable to Iraq or war-ravaged Ukraine.

When he heads to the White House this month, Bukele will be hoping for more than warm words and a few cans of Diet Coke as payback for his support.