This week’s White House meeting between President Trump and the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, offered a crucial opportunity. He shoulder They have marked an era or renewed the commitment of the United States with our allies in Latin America, some recognize pro-US leadership in the region and highlight a key success story amid the growing hemispheric instability.
However, the main democratic politicians and their media allies sought unhealthy to turn the occasion into a political steel against the deportation policies of President Trump. In doing so, the Democrats have revealed a dangerous hypocrisy and a lack of serious towards the security of the American people and the commitment of the United States with Latin America.
The fury of democratic politicians such as Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen focused on the deportation of the administration to El Salvador of illegal immigrants with criminal records and ties with foreign terrorist organizations designated as MS-13 and train El Aragua.
The Democrats have obsessed particularly with the case of the illegal migrant, Kilmar Abrego García, whose criminal records and gang ties were publicly revealed while Van Hollen crossed El Salvador to try to return it to the United States. But if the Democrats were really worried about human rights, they would have some time clarified their deeds while focusing on real victims.
In fact, while Hollen and the main media tried incessantly retrocally retracted GARCÍA as an innocent “Maryland’s man”, they ignored shamefully real victims of the migratory crisis, Suhel Morin Salvadan in 2023.
Worse, Van Hollen’s efforts to avoid the deportation of violent criminals and gang members who illegally reside in the United States threaten to create more victims like Morin, while the mass illegal migration cycle continues.
While Democrats and the media try to paint El Salvador as a repressive dictatorship, they ignore real Latin American dictators who are actually assembling criminal migration against the United States. Indeed,
Nicolás Maduro de Venezuela and Daniel Ortega de Nicaragua have fueled the illegal migration crisis, more particularly flooding our criminal groups such as The Aragua. But instead of greeting Bukele and sanctioning our enemies, Democrats and Biden administration have actively reduced responsibility and pressure on despotic regimes such as Maduro
Meanwhile, leaders in El Salvador and other places are working with Washington to restore order and stability. President Bukele’s leadership has undoubtedly reduced victimization and the greatest protection of human rights.
However, the frenzy of the week of the duration, the US media became obsessively concentrated on the Center for Confinement of El Salvador’s terrorism, a prison built by the Bukele government, where illegal criminal migrants were deported by the Trump administration.
While news organizations and social networks described the CECOT as a repressive gulag, the real installation offers a much better environment for prisoners than any other installation in Latin America.
In fact, prisons throughout the region are dense of impunity, corruption and violence where guards often lack basic control and yields the effective authority for prison gangs. Latin American prisons also suffer from severe overcrowding, with couple populations that reach 150% of the capacity on average, and many countries that exceed 200%.
In comparison, CECOT has a population of less than 50% of the prison capacity. The guards also maintain effective control or CECOT, keeping it free of massacres and mass penitentiary. Even human rights activists in El Salvador recognize that CECOT offers much better conditions than other facilities.
Equally important, the CECOT has been a tool in the dramatic restoration of security and stability of El Salvador Bajo Bukele. However, this dramatic transformation and the greatly improved well -being of the Salvadoran people have been glossed by a frantic means of the USA and a disconnected activist class.
In fact, as recently as 2015, El Salvador had the unfortunate distinction of being the most violent place on Earth, since criminal groups such as MS-13 operated with impunity, victimizing the public on a large scale.
Bukele launched a proactive campaign to the threat of GAG, reinforcing police and military operations, empowering security forces and imprisoning tens of thousands of gangs.
The results have one leg. In the two years after this repression, El Salvador has become the second most sure country of the Western hemisphere, which only follows Canada. The annual homicides have collapsed to Ferwer of 150 homicides, a figure that a decade ago would have eclipsed in the leg in just a few days.
El Salvador has also changed from being a link for criminal gangs that destabilize the United States and the hemisphere to be a crucial partner to help the United States restore stability about migration.
With criminal groups of Mexican drug cartels to Colombian guerrillas that resurface throughout the region, the model and security support of El Salvador are invaluable for the efforts of the Trump administration to reinforce hemispheric security.
At the same time, the United States must work with El Salvador and throughout Latin America to extract the evil presence of China.
These should have been the focus of the coverage and political discourse of this week around Trump’s meeting with Bukele.
On the other hand, the Democrats and the media chose to turn the relationship of Salvador de USA. UU. In a one -dimensional cartoon, eclipseing a crucial opportunity for a regional strategic victory.
Andres Martinez-Fernández is a senior policy analyst in Latin America in the Heritage Foundation
