The El Salvador Exception in a Pacific Rim Context: Outsourced Security Governance Across the Americas and the Asia‐Pacific

ABSTRACT This paper examines the 2025 US decision to deport members of the Venezuelan‐origin gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador under a 6 million incarceration agreement, arguing that the episode represents a critical evolution in outsourced security governance. By comparing this case with the 1980s deportation of Salvadoran gang affiliates, the paper traces the shift from unilateral repatriation to contractual enforcement, illustrating how core coercive functions are increasingly delegated to structurally dependent states. Building on theories of governmentality, delegated sovereignty, and transnational security governance, the article conceptualizes this configuration as “the El Salvador exception. ” To situate the case within broader global dynamics, the paper contextualizes this arrangement alongside other extraterritorial models, such as the Australia‐Nauru offshore processing regime, to highlight a growing transregional trend in outsourced security governance. The analysis demonstrates three implications of this model: the erosion of due process and accountability; the reproduction of asymmetric enforcement hierarchies; and the spatial relocation of security risks to peripheral states. By connecting developments in the Americas with longstanding practices in the Asia‐Pacific, the paper illuminates outsourced security governance as a transregional political technology reshaping contemporary approaches to migration, crime, and sovereignty.