In an era when American alliances have been strained to their breaking point by tariff wars and disputes over military spending, one leader has inserted himself firmly in President Donald Trump’s good graces: El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele,

Bukele struck a deal under which the U.S. will pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a year. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to turn around a flight carrying the immigrants already en route to El Salvador, Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie ... too late.”