As El Salvador climbs out of decades of poverty and gang violence, driven by a booming tourism sector and President Nayib Bukele’s aggressive crackdown on organized crime, Democrats in the U.S. are now threatening to derail that progress with a boycott.
At Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) encouraged Americans to “vote with [their] feet” and avoid visiting the Central American nation. “Costa Rica is a beautiful place: You don’t have to go to El Salvador,” he said, casting the suggestion as a form of economic pressure.
Van Hollen’s comments were echoed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and California Rep. Robert Garcia, who suggested reviewing state contracts and investments tied to El Salvador, with the goal of facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man linked to migrant smuggling, domestic violence, and the MS-13 gang, to the United States.
To many, the Democratic calls for sanctions against a recovering country are not just tone-deaf—they’re vindictive.
“El Salvador has become a beacon of security and economic reform in a region long plagued by instability,” said a political analyst familiar with Central American affairs. “This boycott campaign isn’t about justice—it’s about punishing a sovereign nation for not submitting to U.S. political whims.”
Since President Bukele’s rise to power, El Salvador has undergone a dramatic transformation. Once synonymous with violence and gang warfare, the nation has now seen its homicide rate plummet from 106 per 100,000 in 2015 to just 2.4 in 2023—below the global average.
While human rights groups have criticized Bukele’s leadership, the overwhelming public support from Salvadorans and the country’s revitalized streets, schools, and neighborhoods tell another story.
Tourism has surged as a result. Between January and July 2024, over 2.3 million international visitors arrived in El Salvador—a 22% increase over 2023—making it the fastest-growing tourism destination in Central America.
Children are once again playing in public parks. Families stroll through cities at night. Entire communities are re-emerging from decades of fear.
Yet now, as Salvadorans work to attract foreign investors, create jobs, and rebuild from years of migration-fueled economic erosion, Democratic politicians are calling for a boycott—because El Salvador won’t return a deported native of their country.
“El Salvadorans have taken real steps to fix what the U.S. broke,” said one Salvadoran-American political activist. “And now that they’re finding their own path forward, the same people who cheered open borders and abandoned the region are threatening to tear it all down—again.”
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Why has our congress ended up like a bunch of confused and spoiled junior high school students who think they get to control the world from their electred postions, violate as many rules, regulations, and laws as they think are necessary to gain their own person ends to accumulate person wealth and generally look like absolute fools? I have news for them, they are not the center of and/or control the world by their silly and at times insulting desires. From students who refuse to repay thier student loans to saying that members in our society on SS and other retirement programs should pay their student loans off for them, to thier refusal to accept the responsibility of paying their debts.
As in the old saying, “Rome burned while Nero was fiddling”, the world is currently on fire, and not only that but so internally is the USA. We have state govenments that are operating outside the rules and laws of our federal government, we have courts that have forgotten that they are there to uphold current laws and not legislate or interfear with lawful apprehension of criminals, we have you different youth groups who feel the are oppressed so they are striking out against who they feel are their oppressors in unimagiative ways. In my opinion, this nation is losing its collective way and has become so short sighted that it cannot see where it is headed. Our politicians in both the House and Senate have become to polarized instead of working together, they are making it impossible due to party lines. Frankley the last election saw a resurgence of national brain power that said the nation was on the wrong course and elected a new Captain to change its course. The old crew is fighting the changes, with all it has even as thier popularity and approval as dropped recently to 21%! shouldn’t that tell the old crew that they are not doing the will of the public? The public has spoken about election reform, about goverment waste, about elected officals accumulating weath tens of times greater than their total Congressonal salaries, about enforcent of our Constitutional borders accordign to our Constitution which is also under attack by the same radical left wing, We see the world on fire in which we have been accused of setting the fire back in the Obama?HRC days. We see mass imgration frrom a society in the mideast that even Ike said we can never allow as they will overwhelm the western world and take over, and it has come to pass. We see major leaders pushing the limits of nationalism and personal drive from Putin, to XI, to Trump. We see drug cartels out from Mexico to South America who run their organizatons like large corporations or military campaigns yet nothing has stopped them because people are too concerned with sexual orientation of the insanity of gender reversal rolls. Rercently a Medical doctor actually saying they were the experts on reproduction and when asked if a man can have a baby they said yes. When asked how, the doctor said the children would be “butt babies”. I am now under the impression that out medical fields, our legal system, our legislators, our polarized politial parties, and society in general have all gone insane and have lost their common goals of a future is totally unacceptable. We MUST change or we as a nation will fall from the grace that our founding fathers set forth up on us. But alas, all nations rise and the most powerful ones last approximately 250 to 300 years before the crumble from within and the USA is at the 249 year mark now. I am afraid out Merry-go-Round is screaching to a hault and we are about to fall due to imporper to incompetent leadership of what was once a great nation.
These accusations need to be swiftly investigated and prosecuted under the Logan Act. Looks as if those responsible got on TV and bragged about it. Even threatened foreign countries, and supporters of a sane and lawful America. Conviction is a felony with a fine of $5000 and three years in prison. Conviction should be good for impeachment and removal from office. Oh, and FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!!
FYI,Democrats have no values