The ‘world’s coolest dictator’ heads to the White Home

MEXICO CITY — Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s President and self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” is because of go to President Trump on the White Home on Monday. He is the primary Latin American chief to get an official invite to the Oval Workplace since Trump took workplace.

Bukele is considered one of Trump’s most important regional allies and nobody has embraced his anti-immigration insurance policies as enthusiastically. With Bukele’s help, over the previous few weeks the Trump administration has deported and imprisoned lots of of alleged Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members to El Salvador.

Final month’s inaugural deportation flight to El Salvador and switch to the nation’s infamous mega jail was fastidiously choreographed and filmed in a slick video that Bukele shared on social media.

Extra deportations flights have taken off since then – the most recent on Sunday – regardless of continued questions concerning the lack of transparency, due course of and denials that a lot of these imprisoned have any gang ties in any respect.

So, what can we find out about Bukele and why has he been so readily embraced by the Trump administration and invited to the White Home?

The rise of the Bukele doctrine

Bukele was first elected president in 2019 after a marketing campaign targeted on combating corruption.

In 2022, he declared a state of emergency to sort out gang crime and sky-high murder charges. Underneath the legislation, which stays in place, Bukele has arrested some 85,000 folks, in keeping with Human Rights Watch (HRW). Only one,000 of these arrested have been convicted of crimes, with many harmless folks allegedly incarcerated.

On this photograph offered by El Salvador’s presidential press workplace, a jail guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Middle in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025.

AP/El Salvador presidential press workplace

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AP/El Salvador presidential press workplace

“Under Bukele, El Salvador has become the newest autocracy in the Americas,” mentioned Noah Bullock, Government Director at Cristosal, a Salvadoran human rights NGO.

Regardless of being broadly condemned for rights abuses, many within the Americas — together with President Trump — admire Bukele for efficiently decreasing the variety of homicides in a rustic that for years had one of many highest homicide charges in the complete world. Homicides fell from over 2000 in 2019 to simply 114 final 12 months.

Solely final week, the State Division upgraded El Salvadors journey security ranking to a a lot coveted Stage 1, a gesture that did not go unrecoqnised by President Bukele, who repeatedly tweeted the information. “Exercise normal precautions in El Salvador. Gang activity has decreased over the last three years,” the advisory said. The extent 1 ranking is barely held by a tiny handful of Latin American nations and is above the Stage 2 journey ranking beneficial for nations just like the U.Okay. , Sweden and France.

“Politicians throughout the region trying to look for quick solutions for the violence coming from organized crime, are attempting to use the Bukele discourse,” mentioned Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Director of the Americas Division at HRW.

All this has helped bolster his reputation at residence. The president enjoys as much as 80% approval and gained his re-election in 2024 by a landslide. Although Bullock notes that many are too scared to publicly oppose him.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele speaks throughout the Conservative Political Motion Convention, CPAC 2024, on the Nationwide Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md., Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024.

Jose Luis Magana/FR159526 AP

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Jose Luis Magana/FR159526 AP

A MAGA alliance

Amongst Bukele’s many regional followers are MAGA Republicans. Donald Trump Jr. attended Bukele’s second-term inauguration in June 2024. The MAGA devoted cheered him on as he spoke on the Conservative Political Motion Convention in Washington, in February final 12 months.

The Trump administration additionally has shut diplomatic ties to El Salvador. Each Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem paid visits to the nation on their first abroad journeys.

“El Salvador is the only country, at least in Central America, that has shown 100% willingness to do everything that the United States has required,” mentioned Ana María Méndez Dardón, Central America Director on the Washington Workplace on Latin America.

This willingness has most notoriously prolonged to sending lots of of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants accused of alleged gang affiliation to Bukele’s notorious mega jail, the Terrorism Confinement Middle, or CECOT — partially invoking the obscure 1798 Alien Enemies Act to focus on alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan jail gang.

The deportations have been broadly condemned and proceed to be closely scrutinized in the united statescourts. HRW calls them “forced disappearances” to a middle “known for its abusive conditions.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with President Nayib Bukele at his residence at Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025.

Mark Schiefelbein/POOL AP

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Mark Schiefelbein/POOL AP

What’s on the desk on the White Home?

At their assembly on Monday, the 2 leaders are anticipated to debate additional cooperation on migration, tariffs and the potential detention in El Salvador of “dangerous” American criminals.

“These would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly, and these are violent repeat offenders in American streets,” mentioned Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary.

However she additionally clarified that the coverage’s feasibility and legality is but to be decided.

Trump’s El Salvador deportation technique has obtained a combined response from the Supreme Court docket, which on Monday, April 7, permitted additional deportations beneath the 1798 legislation, however dominated that deportees have to be given due course of.

The court docket additionally directed the administration to “facilitate” the discharge Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador regardless of being granted protections by an immigration decide, who discovered he may face gang violence there.

On Sunday the Division of Justice mentioned the courts had “no authority” to pressure El Salvador to launch Abrego Garcia. That rests with the president ” as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”