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What is your preferred term to describe El Salvador's role "imprisoning non-Salvadorians not accused of any crime in El Salvador, at the request of and and with payment from the USA?" Does "agent" categorically not apply, or is the disagreement in the question of the extent to which it's "subject to judicial or executive directions from the United States?" It's probably reasonable to assume the Trump administration didn't include subjecting El Salvador to judicial directions in their contract, but if El Salvador isn't subject to executive directions, how do you think prisoner transfers occur?
The crux of the controversy, to me, is that if the arrangement had been entered into by "normal" politicians acting in good faith, the problem could easily be fixed, albeit at the cost of embarrassing the USA; however, because the arrangement is the product of a Trump administration that seems to be trying to maximize executive power and minimize judicial oversight and Bukele, who is trying to be "The World's Coolest Dictator," they won't do what's within their power to fix the problem.
That might indeed be a circumstance where there is a clear contractual agreement with an obvious consideration. But that is not what has happened here: the prisoner is a Salvadoran national with no residency right in the U.S., in El Salvador. El Salvador has the right to prosecute him regardless of our opinion, so they are not clearly doing anything they couldn't or wouldn't do on their own.
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