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The Trump administration wants Americans to feel safe traveling to El Salvador, even as the Salvadoran regime imprisons hundreds of immigrants who were hastily flown there from the U.S. in chains.
On Tuesday, the State Department lowered a travel advisory on El Salvador from 2 to 1, the lowest level possible, even as the Department of Justice is fighting a judge’s order to bring back to the U.S. s man who was sent to an Salvadoran prison in “error.” The new advisory, which comes days ahead of a planned White House visit by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, was made despite human rights groups having denounced Bukele — a self-described “dictator” who’s become a hero to the MAGA movement — for human rights abuses.
As Bloomberg reported:
President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday elevated El Salvador’s travel safety designation to the best possible, putting it above countries in Western Europe, before President Nayib Bukele’s visit to the White House next week. ‘Exercise normal precautions in El Salvador,’ the State Department said in its updated travel advisory. ‘Gang activity has decreased over the last three years. This has caused a drop in violent crimes and murders.’
The State Department is implying El Salvador’s gang crackdown has made it safe for Americans to travel there. But for years human rights groups have been sounding the alarm on Bukele’s suspension of civil rights, which has made that crackdown possible — an effort that is believed to have ensnared many children and subjected scores of prisoners to brutal, often deadly, punishment.
Bloomberg notes the new travel advisory effectively means the U.S. is rating El Salvador as safer for travel than places like France or the United Kingdom:
The upgrade to Level 1 puts El Salvador ahead of some more traditional travel destinations for Americans like France, the UK and Italy. They’re all at Level 2, a recommendation to ‘Exercise Increased Caution,’ because of threats from terrorists. Some other nations in Central America, including Panama and Costa Rica, are Level 2, with neighboring Guatemala Level 3, which carries a recommendation to ‘Reconsider Travel.’
The Trump administration is unambiguously signaling its support for the Salvadoran regime, suggesting that Trump and company plan to maintain their illiberal relationship with Bukele — and potentially even to try to expand it.
A recent CBS News analysis found that the overwhelming majority of the 238 U.S. immigrants sent to El Salvador by the the Trump administration have no record of having committed a crime (neither MSNBC nor NBC News have verified that report). A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that the men “are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more. They just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”
That context — and this administration’s documented susceptibility to error — is worth considering as the Trump administration floats the possibility of expanding its authoritarian policy to disappear American citizens into El Salvador’s prisons.
In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Bukele had offered to jail U.S. citizens in El Salvador, a move that Rubio admitted was likely to hit some legal hurdles — you know, because it’s blatantly illegal to expatriate U.S. citizens to foreign prisons.
When Trump was asked about the idea again last Sunday he responded, “I love that.” He added that he’d be “honored” to send incarcerated Americans to El Salvador, before noting, “I don’t know what the law says on that.”