Donald Trump is a big fan of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and turns a blind eye to his administration’s myriad human rights violations and increasing authoritarianism, in exchange for El Salvador’s accepting deportees of any nationality.
But why does Bukele also have a fan in Democratic Representative Vicente Gonzalez?
The Texas moderate is the lone House Democrat to have met with Bukele while visiting El Salvador, and toured the country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, where immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once held and where Venezuelan immigrants removed from the United States are currently detained. Other Democrats, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, were unable to visit the prison or meet with Bukele on their visits to the country.
“El Salvador is crucial in helping the United States curb the flow of irregular migration and is an important ally in the western hemisphere,” Gonzalez said in a press release after his visit.
Gonzalez’s district voted for Trump in 2024 and is 90 percent Hispanic, and also happens to be on America’s southern border. Gonzales has praised Bukele, claiming that the Salvadoran leader has created a model for Latin America with his crackdown on gangs in the country.
“I think it’s undeniable what he’s done has been spectacular, in terms of bringing security to over 98 percent of the population that lived in turmoil for over a generation,” Gonzalez told Politico Magazine. “He clean[ed] up the most dangerous country in the world and turn[ed] it into the safest in the hemisphere.”
Along with former Representative Matt Gaetz, Gonzalez is a founding member of the El Salvador Caucus in Congress, and now is only one of two Democrats in the pro-Bukele organization, along with Representative Lou Correa. That may be due to the fact that Bukele has trolled and mocked other Democrats on social media, who have criticized the Trump administration’s deal with El Salvador.
That doesn’t seem to matter to Gonzalez, who thinks “Democrats … shouldn’t shy from building a diplomatic relationship with the country of El Salvador,” despite the fact that human rights activists in the country have been arrested and journalists have been forced to flee. Perhaps Gonzalez should ask himself how he’d feel if Trump acted like the Salvadoran autocrat.
The post Why Is a House Democrat Making Nice With El Salvador’s President? appeared first on New Republic.
