Palestinian Nayib Bukele helps solve America's immigration problem

[yankeedoodle]

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born on 24 July 1981 in San Salvador.[13] He is a son of Armando Bukele Kattán and Olga Ortez de Bukele.[13][14] According to The Times of Israel, Bukele's paternal grandparents were Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem and Bethlehem while his maternal grandmother was Catholic and his maternal grandfather was Greek Orthodox.[15] His father later converted to Islam and became an imam.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele

From Information Liberation
El Salvador President Bukele's Wildly Popular Gang Crackdown is Reducing Illegal Immigration to U.S.
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63857

President Nayib Bukele's successful crackdown on MS-13 gang members has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of Salvadorans illegally crossing our southern border, the Wall Street Journal reports.

From The Wall Street Journal, "The Country With the Highest Murder Rate Now Has the Highest Incarceration Rate":  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-country-with-the-highest-murder-rate-now-has-the-highest-incarceration-rate-b5401da7

El Salvador, long whipsawed by gang violence that made it one of the world's most dangerous countries, turned things around by jailing huge swaths of its population. The country once known for having the world's highest murder rate now has the world's highest incarceration rate—about double that of the U.S.

Since March 2022, President Nayib Bukele's government has implemented a campaign to arrest en masse suspected members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs that have long terrorized the impoverished Central American nation, blocking economic growth and stoking U.S.-bound migration.

The strategy has helped lower homicides by 92% compared with 2015, giving Bukele the support of nine of every 10 Salvadorans, polls show. The number of Salvadorans illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped by 44%.

These numbers are even more significant considering illegal immigration overall has hit record levels thanks to the Biden regime's open borders policies.

It also has put some 68,000 people in this Massachusetts-size country of 6.3 million behind bars. That's more than 1% of the population, according to World Prison Brief, an online database on correctional systems. Rights groups said the campaign has swept up innocent people, especially among the country's poor and indigenous communities, who are held for long periods in harsh conditions without trial.

Responding to allegations of prisoner mistreatment, Bukele during a cabinet meeting in October said, "Yes, they'll have human rights. But the human rights of honest people are more important."

[...] Detentions of Salvadorans, once one of the largest groups trying to cross the southwestern border, illegally crossing have dropped to about 36,500 in the eight months through May of this fiscal year from more than 65,000 in the same period a year earlier, just before the campaign began.

It was reported in 2010 that around one fifth the entire population of El Salvador was living in the US.

MS-13 gang members make headlines every week for committing heinous murders in cities throughout the US.

We're supposed to believe these gang members have a "spark of divinity" inside them and the diversity they bring is "our greatest strength."

The success of Bukele's heavy-handed crackdown has made fools of our ruling elites who insist "restorative justice" and throwing open our nation's prisons is how you create peace.

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1678505780314505216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1678505780314505216%7Ctwgr%5E56bb18973c4c40a15722cca86b3c9a9edfa878c5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationliberation.com%2F%3Fid%3D63857

According to the WSJ, other Latin American countries "grappl[ing] with their own high murder rates" are considering following in Bukele's footsteps:

Ecuadoreans, one of the largest nationalities heading to the U.S., have seen the homicide rate in their country quadruple from 2019 through 2022. Some politicians, such as Cynthia Viteria, who until May served as mayor of the violent Ecuadorean city of Guayaquil, encouraged Ecuador's government to mimic the Salvadoran leader's policies to bring down crime and stop the killing of police officers.

"It's simple, just copy him. Do what Bukele's doing," she said in September. "The solutions are out there, for those who have the guts to implement them."

Jan Topic, an independent presidential candidate in Ecuador and a Bukele admirer, said his experience as a French foreign legion sniper serving in Syria and Ukraine would help him bring order to the streets and gang-controlled prisons.

In Guatemala, several presidential candidates adopted a security agenda inspired on Bukele's policies in this summer's election.

In Colombia, beset by armed groups in much of the countryside, the opposition Democratic Center party recently invited Bukele to visit the country and showered him with praise after leftist president, Gustavo Petro, compared El Salvador's overcrowded jails to concentration camps.

"I think I'll go on vacation to Colombia," Bukele quipped on Twitter.

The scale of MS-13's extortion was tremendous:

Former central bank governor Carlos Acevedo said that gangs raked in an estimated $500 million a year from extortion paid by businesses and residents. Multilateral organizations estimated that crime cost El Salvador 15% of its $29 billion economy.

Those losses are now being reversed, business groups said. In a survey earlier this year by the National Association of Private Enterprise, the country's largest business group, members reported drops of 40% to 70% in extortion since mid-2022.

[...] more than 60% of Salvadorans said they didn't care if their government was democratic as long as it solved their day-to-day problems, according to a survey by Chile-based regional pollster Latinobarometro in 2021.

[...] Public-bus operators were robbed of at least $20 million a year through extortion, according to Genaro Ramírez, president of El Salvador's public transport bus association. Extortion had become so institutionalized that Ramirez said a bank asked him for detailed information on payments to gangs when he once applied for a business loan. Gangs also boarded buses to rob passengers.

Some 3,000 public transport workers and bus owners were killed in gang crossfire and attacks over the past two decades, Ramírez said. In 2010, after a bus owner refused to pay extortion, at least 17 people were killed when gangsters doused a bus full of passengers with gasoline and set it ablaze, then fired bullets at anyone who tried to run out. The incident transfixed Salvadorans.

Over the past year, extortion has fallen to "negligible sums," Ramírez said. He credited the anti-gang campaign, calling it harsh but necessary.

"Of course, there is going to be collateral damage, nothing is perfect," said Ramírez. "But I can't criticize what's working."

The Biden regime has had nothing but criticism for Bukele for undermining what they call "democracy."

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1643334584082345986?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1643334584082345986%7Ctwgr%5E56bb18973c4c40a15722cca86b3c9a9edfa878c5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationliberation.com%2F%3Fid%3D63857

The Biden regime can have their opposition arrested and censored on social media but Bukele can't throw a bunch of gang members in prison.

Incidentally, as the National Interest highlighted in May, they have no similar criticisms when it comes to the Dominican Republic's human rights abuses.

From The National Interest, "Behind the Biden Administration's Hypocritical Treatment of El Salvador And The Dominican Republic":  https://nationalinterest.org/blog/behind-biden-administration%E2%80%99s-hypocritical-treatment-el-salvador-and-dominican-republic-206514

Since Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele began his crackdown on violent street gangs, the Biden administration, international media, and NGOs have made the small Central American republic the focal point of negative attention about accused corruption, civil liberties violations, and creeping authoritarianism. In contrast, the Dominican Republic, which is using much harsher forms of "preventative detention," has seen virtually no hand-wringing about "democratic backsliding," corruption, and human rights violations. Instead, the Biden administration has praised the Dominican Republic's criminal justice system. The media and U.S. government's disparate treatment of these two Latin American nations demonstrates a lack of consistency and principles in our diplomacy towards our neighboring countries.

After an unprecedented spike in gang-related homicides, El Salvador instituted a state of exception to address the violence. The crackdown increases the time someone can be detained without charge from three to fifteen days, restricted bail and other alternatives to pre-trial detention, and strengthened police powers. Even critics acknowledge the moves have popular support and have dramatically reduced violence. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the crackdown because it "lends itself to attempts to censor the media, prevent reporting on corruption and other matters of public interest, and silence critics of the Salvadoran government." The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights called it a violation of human rights law, focusing on the fact that "the previous two-year limit to pre-trial detention has been eliminated." International media has put the spotlight on these criticisms with heavy coverage for an otherwise obscure country of six million.

In contrast, there has been almost no attention given to the Dominican Republic's far more draconian "pre-trial detention" regime. According to the country's National Office of Public Defense (ONDP), 70 percent of the prison population in the country is held under the "preventive detention" mandate imposed by President Luis Abinader. Most of the inmates are imprisoned for extended periods, even years, without formal charges or court proceedings. A recent ONDP report acknowledges that half of these detainees remain in confinement even past the expiry of their preventive detention mandate, the exact issue raised by the United Nations.

While Blinken warns that El Salvador's pretrial detention can be used to silence critics of the government, the Dominican Republic has arrested nineteen members of the opposition leadership including Abinader's 2020 opponent, Gonzalo Castillo. Six of these leaders were ordered to serve eighteen months of preventive detention without any charges, as the investigation continued. These preventive orders do not expire until after the 2024 re-election, effectively neutering their ability to conduct a campaign.

The Biden regime must have been taking notes.

[...] Yet these reports are ignored and contradicted by the White House and State Department leadership. Instead of criticizing the pretrial detention of political opponents under the guise of anti-corruption, President Joe Biden recently praised Abinader for "moderniz[ing] its anti-corruption law." In contrast, there has been little evidence that El Salvador's gang crackdown has been used on political opponents. Under Secretary of State for Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Urza Zeya has called the Dominican Republic a "bright spot" for "combating corruption, improving citizen security" and "protecting human rights."

Bukele is a model leader for the world.

We could only be so lucky as to live under his "dictatorship" rather than our own.

[yankeedoodle]

A woman walks past a billboard in Buenos Aires promoting Argentinian presidential candidate Santiago Cuneo alongside an image of El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele. Cuneo says he seeks to emulate Bukele's model of government. (Rodrigo Abd / Associated Press)

Inside the growing cult of El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, Latin America's political star   
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-07-25/growing-cult-of-nayib-bukele

MEXICO CITY —  In Peru, there is talk of building a monument in his honor.

In Honduras and Ecuador, leaders have copied his draconian security policies, his tough-on-crime rhetoric — and even his fashion choices.

In Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala, citizens have taken to the streets calling on their own governments to embrace his extreme strategies for combating violence.

Latin America has a new hero on the right: the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

The brash young autocrat has won legions of fans throughout the region for a sweeping crackdown on gangs that has dramatically lowered violent crime. That his "mano dura" policies draw scorn from human rights and democracy advocates seems to only feed his cult-like status as a renegade willing to get things done, whatever the cost.

"He is a role model," said Diego Uceda Guerra-García, the mayor of a district in Lima, Peru, who has called for stiffer laws and longer prison sentences, and who hopes to build a public park in Bukele's name. "He has put an end to the scourge. In countries like ours where there is a lot of ignorance and a lot of underdevelopment, sometimes we have to be a bit heavy-handed. Half-measures do not work."

One recent poll showed that Bukele was twice as popular among Ecuadoreans as any of their own politicians — a sentiment that appears common across the continent.

The cult of Bukele is part of a recent surge of populist outsiders worldwide and reflects the degree to which crime has become a major anxiety across Latin America. Already facing the highest homicide rate in the world, the region has seen an increase in violence, including some nations that until recently were relatively peaceful.

"If Bukele was able to subdue crime in El Salvador, why are security policies less effective in other countries?" asked the Colombian magazine Semana, which recently devoted its cover to the Salvadoran leader with the headline: "The miracle of Nayib Bukele."

"That is the question that millions of people ask themselves."

Bukele, a 42-year-old former marketing executive who prefers TikTok to traditional media, has described himself both as an "instrument of God" and the "world's coolest dictator."

Since taking office in 2019 on a pledge to squash corruption and break with the country's entrenched political parties, he has consistently courted controversy, verbally sparring with the U.S. ambassador, tweeting "Simpsons" memes at the International Monetary Fund and making El Salvador the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.

Faced with some of the highest homicide rates in the world and the decades-long dominance of the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, his government first tried to contain the violence by secretly negotiating a truce with gangsters. When that broke down last year, Bukele declared a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties as authorities jailed more than 70,000 people — about 2% of the country's adult population — in a matter of months.

Human rights groups cried foul, citing due process violations, the deaths of dozens of inmates and the imprisonment of children as young as 12. At the same time, critics cited an escalating series of anti-democratic power grabs as evidence that Bukele was embracing authoritarianism.

Yet as homicides plunged, Bukele's approval ratings skyrocketed.

Today 93% of Salvadorans endorse his presidency, one of the highest rates in the world. And 9 out of 10 support Bukele's campaign for reelection next year — even though the constitution prohibits consecutive presidential terms.

With that kind of popularity, experts say, it's no wonder there are so many regional copycats.

In Argentina and other Andean nations, Bukele's face now appears in the campaign advertisements of candidates hoping to exploit his political capital. Some politicians, including Colombia's presidential runner-up, Rodolfo Hernández, have made pilgrimages to El Salvador to observe for themselves the cult of "Bukelismo."

Politicians throughout the region have also begun mimicking his style — aviator sunglasses, leather bomber jackets, baseball caps.

Consider Jan Topíc, a candidate in next month's presidential election in Ecuador, whom local media describe as the "Ecuadorean Bukele" for his carefully shaped beard, his propensity for leather jackets and his outspoken support for the Salvadoran leader.

"Everybody wants to be a Bukele," said Steven Levitsky, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, who added that the Salvadoran is one of the most revered politicians in the region since Hugo Chávez, a socialist who led Venezuela until his death in 2013.

Though he hails from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Bukele, like Chávez, is a populist and an autocrat, and his appeal has raised similar concerns about the fate of democracy on a continent still grappling with a long history of dictatorships.

Levitsky, who is co-author of the 2018 bestselling book "How Democracies Die," said it's no accident that Bukele's ascent has coincided with a rise in crime across many parts of Latin America.

"Security pushes people to the right, almost invariably, and pushes voters in a more authoritarian direction in the sense that they're willing to accept violations of human rights, civil liberties and rule of law," Levitsky said. "People across the world are willing to sacrifice a lot of liberal democratic niceties for security."

Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly magazine, recently wrote that violent crime may be replacing government corruption as the most important issue for voters in Latin America.

"Violent crime is dominating the political debate," he said, citing polls in multiple countries in which voters named crime as the most important issue.

That includes nations long considered safe, such as Chile, where homicides have doubled over the last decade, and Ecuador, where the growing cocaine trade has unleashed record levels of bloodshed.

Ecuador's president, Guillermo Lasso, recently lifted a ban on civilians carrying firearms and has declared states of emergency that have elicited comparisons to Bukele's efforts in El Salvador.

Even some leaders on the left are embracing Bukele-style policies.

A group of officers in dark uniforms wielding assault weapons
Police officers patrol in the La Planeta neighborhood in San Pedro Sula. Honduras has become the second country in Central America to suspend some constitutional rights to deal with gang violence. (Delmer Martinez / Associated Press)
As a candidate, Honduran President Xiomara Castro vowed to adopt a community-oriented approach to public safety and reform the nation's famously corrupt security apparatus. But since taking office last year, she has given security forces more power, imposing a state of emergency that involves the suspension of some constitutional rights. Last month, she authorized a prison crackdown nearly identical to one ordered by Bukele last year.

Just as in El Salvador, authorities in Honduras performed a sweep of prisons, ostensibly searching for contraband, and later published images of tattooed inmates being subjected to humiliations in their underwear. Like Bukele, Castro has begun wearing aviator sunglasses.

"The aesthetics of Bukelismo are definitely taking the region by storm," said Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council for Foreign Relations, who said Bukele has fashioned himself as the second coming of Francisco Morazán, the 19th century Honduran leader who served as president of a short-lived federation of Central American nations formed after independence from Spain. Unlike Bukele, he was known as a champion of individual liberties.

In Honduras, where gangs extort money from business owners, truck drivers and even students, many say they would like the Castro government to go even further in Bukele's direction.

"He's an example for all of us in Central America," said Glenda Pineda, a 51-year-old accountant at a paint store in San Pedro Sula.

"We can't stand the violence any more," she said. "The little bit a shopkeeper earns, he has to share with one, two, sometimes three gangs."

The new state of emergency and recent prison raids were a good start, she said: "But I think it has to be a lot harsher."

Sandra Torres, the front-runner in next month's presidential runoff in Guatemala, says she too sees El Salvador as a model. "I plan to implement President Bukele's strategies," Torres said. "They are working."

Bukele's policies have also found fans in the United States.

Salvadorans have organized street marches in his favor in Los Angeles. In Washington, Republicans have lambasted the Biden administration for leveling sanctions against members of Bukele's government, including the nation's prisons chief, who is accused of negotiating with gang leadership to provide political support to Bukele's party, New Ideas.

"It's absurd to criticize [Bukele] for giving Salvadoran people their freedom back," said Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, who met with Bukele in El Salvador this spring. "The left is so allergic to law enforcement that it would rather see Barrio 18 and MS-13 roaming the streets than criminals locked up."

While analysts say Bukele is almost guaranteed to win a second term, they point to problems on the horizon: namely the country's steep foreign debt. Many have also questioned how long his regional influence will endure, given that his strategy for fighting crime in El Salvador, a nation of 6.5 million people that is smaller in size than Massachusetts, would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

And along with praise for Bukele, there is also growing fear.