News Analysis: The Trump administration’s budding bromance with El Salvador’s leader
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GUATEMALA CITY — While the Biden administration criticized Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s strong-armed governing style, the Trump administration sees him as its new best friend in Latin America.
Bukele made a name for himself by jailing tens of thousands of alleged gang members, which has helped to bring down the homicide rate in the country.
More than 1% of the national population is now imprisoned — including children — and conditions are often atrocious, human rights activists say, adding he’s suspended civil rights and conducted massive dragnets that sweep up criminal and innocent alike.
But when America’s top diplomat, former Sen. Marco Rubio, made his inaugural trip as secretary of State to Latin America this week, he showered praise on the 43-year-old El Salvador leader.
And Bukele responded in kind.
This week he offered to let Trump move immigrants who are imprisoned in the U.S. to detention centers in El Salvador, what the administration has called “outsourcing” security and punishment for crime.
But Bukele didn’t stop there. He went on to say he would also take convicted felons who are U.S. citizens.
“We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison in exchange for a fee,” Bukele wrote on X. “The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
Trump and billionaire Elon Musk quickly joined Rubio in judging what a “good idea” the plan was. Trump said he didn’t think it would cost too much, compared to paying private U.S. contractors to run jails. No one made much mention, initially, that it is illegal to deport U.S. citizens.
“We are profoundly grateful,” Rubio said in remarks to reporters in San Salvador. “It’s just one more sign of what an incredible friend we have in President Bukele and the Salvadoran people.”
He was effusive in praising the “unprecedented generosity” of such an offer even as he also continued to express resounding approval for Bukele’s crackdown on gangs.
Later, television footage showed the two men at Bukele’s verdant lakeside mansion, strolling down the gentle hillside, waving at boats on the water.
Bukele likes to call himself the world’s coolest dictator. He wore his customary aviators, chinos and an untucked shirt. Rubio in a blue suit attempted casual, shedding a tie.
Rubio has long been an admirer of Bukele, whom he calls a friend. The relationship is newer for Trump and may have accelerated after Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and Matt Gaetz were guests of honor at Bukele’s second inauguration last year.
There is mutual benefit in this relationship, a way for Trump to bask in the glow of a popular leader who has been extremely tough on crime and is admired by some of the region’s other presidents.
For Bukele, he may be inoculating himself against Trump’s potential wrath by going overboard with gestures of cooperation and avoiding the tariffs and other sanctions that a number of other countries are facing.
“Bukele holds absolute power in El Salvador, shows toughness ... without concern for democratic norms or human rights, ... and Trump admires that,” said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank that focuses on Latin America. “They are feeding off each other, both eliminating any constraints on executive power.”
The United States and El Salvador have shared a long, contentious history, the most dramatic era being the Salvadoran civil war.
More than 75,000 people — in a country of 5 million — were killed, from 1980-92, in fighting between the U.S.-backed right-wing government on one side, and Cuban-backed leftist guerrillas on the other. Then-U.S. President Reagan saw the struggle as a crusade against Soviet-inspired communism, while the left saw it as the search for justice for the country’s poor.
The war was marked by atrocities, including the murder by U.S.-trained soldiers of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989.
The war propelled tens of thousands of Salvadorans to immigrate to U.S. cities — including Los Angeles — cementing the ties through well-established communities.
Bukele’s human rights abuses and dismantling of democracy became increasingly clear in the months after he first won election in 2019. Like many autocrats, he stacked the legislature and then the courts with loyalists who in turn assured he would face little criticism or impediment to his plans.
This allowed him to engineer an unconstitutional run for a second term, which he assumed last year.
The chorus of international criticism did not stop.
“We documented dozens of arbitrary arrests of children, boys and girls. Many arrests appear to be based on the detainees’ appearance or anonymous complaints, rather than on credible evidence,” Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas for Human Rights Watch, testified to Congress in December after the group conducted an extensive survey in El Salvador. He quoted police saying they had quotas to arrest a certain number of people per day.
The Biden administration early on was critical of Bukele and his actions, levying a number of limited sanctions on some officials. But eventually Biden’s people relented, acknowledging they had to work with Bukele.
Rubio vowed to take the alliance further, saying “allies” must be treated better. He made no mention of human rights.
“We are unified and hold in common so many things,” Rubio said as he departed San Salvador.
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