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

MEXICO CITY — Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president and self-styled “world’s coolest dictator,” is due to visit President Trump at the White House on Monday. He’s the first Latin American leader to get an official invite to the Oval Office since Trump took office.

Bukele is one of Trump’s most crucial regional allies and no one has embraced his anti-immigration policies as enthusiastically. With Bukele’s support, over the past few weeks the Trump administration has deported and imprisoned hundreds of alleged Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members to El Salvador.

Last month’s inaugural deportation flight to El Salvador and transfer to the country’s notorious mega prison was carefully choreographed and filmed in a slick video that Bukele shared on social media.

More deportations flights have taken off since then — the latest on Sunday — despite continued questions about the lack of transparency, due process and denials that many of those imprisoned have any gang ties at all.

So, what do we know about Bukele and why has he been so readily embraced by the Trump administration and invited to the White House?

The rise of the Bukele doctrine

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

In 2022, he declared a state of emergency to tackle gang crime and sky-high homicide rates. Under the law, which remains in place, Bukele has arrested some 85,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Only 1,000 of those arrested were convicted of crimes, with many innocent people allegedly incarcerated.

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

Despite being widely condemned for rights abuses, many in the Americas — including President Trump — admire Bukele for successfully reducing the number of homicides in a country that for years had one of the highest murder rates in the entire world. Homicides fell from over 2000 in 2019 to just 114 last year.

Only last week, the State Department upgraded El Salvadors travel safety rating to a much coveted Level 1, a gesture that didn’t go unrecoqnised by President Bukele, who repeatedly tweeted the news. “Exercise normal precautions in El Salvador. Gang activity has decreased over the last three years,” the advisory stated. The level 1 rating is only held by a tiny handful of Latin American countries and is above the Level 2 travel rating recommended for countries like the U.K. , 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,” said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Director of the Americas Division at HRW.

All this has helped bolster his popularity at home. The president enjoys up to 80% approval and won his re-election in 2024 by a landslide. Though Bullock notes that many are too scared to publicly oppose him.

A MAGA alliance

Among Bukele’s many regional fans are MAGA Republicans. Donald Trump Jr. attended Bukele’s second-term inauguration in June 2024. The MAGA faithful cheered him on as he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, in February last year.

The Trump administration also has close diplomatic ties to El Salvador. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem paid visits to the country on their first overseas trips.

“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,” said Ana María Méndez Dardón, Central America Director at the Washington Office on Latin America.

This willingness has most notoriously extended to sending hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants accused of alleged gang affiliation to Bukele’s infamous mega prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT — in part invoking the obscure 1798 Alien Enemies Act to target alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang.

The deportations have been widely condemned and continue to be heavily scrutinized in the U.S courts. HRW calls them “forced disappearances” to a center “known for its abusive conditions.”

What’s on the table at the White House?

At their meeting on Monday, the two leaders are expected to discuss further 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,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary.

But she also clarified that the policy’s feasibility and legality is yet to be determined.

Trump’s El Salvador deportation strategy has received a mixed response from the Supreme Court, which on Monday, April 7, permitted further deportations under the 1798 law, but ruled that deportees must be given due process.

The court also directed the administration to “facilitate” the release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador despite being granted protections by an immigration judge, who found he could face gang violence there.

On Sunday the Department of Justice said the courts had “no authority” to force El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia. That rests with the president ” as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”