El Salvador's strongman president, Nayib Bukele, is sending thousands of troops to Haiti to boost the island's push to wipe out its gang problem — and find four of his military personnel who were captured in a recent ambush.

  • Bukele called President Trump on Tuesday to make sure he had no problem with this major military escalation, to which Haiti's government has agreed.
  • "Do what you have to do," Trump told him, according to sources briefed on the call.

Why it matters: If it works, Bukele's troop surge could stabilize Haiti, a country 700 miles from Florida that has been devastated by deadly gang violence and has lacked a president since the last one, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated five years ago.

  • If it doesn't work, it could increase Haiti's death toll well beyond the 5,700-plus killed in gang violence this year, embarrass Bukele and mark yet another failed international effort to restore stability to the country.

Haiti also may be a test case for Bukele and security contractor Erik Prince — a Trump and Bukele ally also operating in Haiti— to act as public-private proxies for U.S. muscle in the hemisphere.

  • El Salvador announced Wednesday it was deploying as many as 2,000 troops to Haiti. That number could double or triple, sources say.
  • "We didn't come to Haiti to make money, because no one is paying us to do it. We came to Haiti to fight against the wicked," Bukele, writing in Haitian Creole, wrote Thursday on X.

Zoom in: Along with other countries, El Salvador has been part of a UN-established initiative called the Gang Suppression Force, or GSF, operating in Haiti's capital city of Port-au-Prince.

  • On Oct. 18, four Salvadoran aviation technicians were ambushed and remain unaccounted for, according to the Miami Herald.
  • Three days later, Bukele posted a warning on X: "I want you, the gang leaders, to understand one thing very clearly: Today's attack is nothing compared to what is coming if we do not get all four hostages back alive."
  • "We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too," he wrote.

Zoom out: First elected in 2019, Bukele rose to political fame and infamy for wiping out the MS-13 gang in El Salvador in a campaign of brute military force and mass incarceration.

  • Bukele's efforts transformed El Salvador from a murder capital to what's widely viewed as one of the Western Hemisphere's safest countries.
  • Bukele, who has a strong relationship with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, endeared himself to the new Trump administration by agreeing to accept third-country migrants who were mass-deported from the U.S. and then locked up in Bukele's notorious CECOT prison.

Driving the news: Bukele's force was authorized to operate on the island in a bilateral agreement with Haiti approved on Wednesday as Salvadoran special forces and hardware began pouring in.

  • Also Wednesday, Haiti's electoral council postponed presidential elections until next year because of the gang violence.

Between the lines: Bukele's force appears to be operating parallel to the GSF — to which it currently belongs — and Prince's private security firm, Vectus Global, a successor to Blackwater.

  • Florida Rep. Brian Mast (R), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the UN-backed GSF is too bureaucratic and timid. The GSF's predecessor, led by Kenya, was too feckless and, at a cost of $1 billion, too expensive, he said.
  • "We spent the equivalent of $1 million per Kenyan and the situation was worse at the end," Mast said.

To show the butchery of Haitian gangs, Mast shared with Axios a video of a Haitian man who was hacked to death by machetes for helping the GSF. Rape, arson, extortion and kidnapping are rampant on the island.

  • Beyond El Salvador finding its four missing personnel, Mast said, "I hope the mission is revenge, retribution and destruction of the gangs. Somebody needs to be there with motive and motivation."
  • "Now the fight is personal to them and the fight will be taken to the gangs," he added. "The U.S. wants to be out of this and not spend millions on nothing."

The intrigue: Bukele had proposed that the Trump administration let El Salvador pacify Haiti as a U.S. proxy force, but "Rubio wanted to stay away from that. He wants to keep Haiti off the radar," a source familiar with the discussions told Axios.

  • Bukele had requested military equipment from the U.S., including drones and transport planes, but it was officially denied, according to another source who said that Colombia ultimately may act as an unofficial go-between to supply Bukele's force with no U.S. fingerprints on the mission.

Inside the room: When Bukele called Trump on Tuesday, the president expressed sympathy and condolences over the plight of Bukele's missing military personnel, a White House official said.

  • "Bukele doesn't want the U.S. to suddenly cut him off at the knees for going in," a source briefed on the call said.
  • Trump's focus on Haiti is largely limited to making sure it takes back its citizens who were in the U.S. under temporary protected status, which Trump terminated last year.
  • "Bukele told the president he was confidant he could do the job. But it might get messy," the source briefed on the call said. "The gangs f*cked with the wrong guy. He has something to prove."