[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 50 (Thursday, March 21, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2485-S2486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              El Salvador

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I recently returned from a trip to El 
Salvador, where I met President Nayib Bukele and saw firsthand the 
effects of his remarkable transformation of that country from the most 
dangerous nation in our hemisphere to one of the safest.
  As we drove around San Salvador, the images were commonplace yet 
extraordinary--children played soccer in the parks, young women jogged 
at twilight, couples dined outdoors--commonplace because one should 
expect to see such scenes in any decent community; extraordinary 
because they were unheard of just a few years ago.
  Unfortunately, this trip was also a reminder that President Biden is 
as weak, unpopular, and divisive abroad as he is at home. And just as 
he coddles criminals and cartels in our own country, he too often 
sympathizes with them in other nations.
  Since taking office, President Biden has refused to meet President 
Bukele, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has criticized him, and the 
administration has significantly reduced foreign assistance to his 
government.
  One must ask why. After all, President Bukele is the most pro-
American leader in Latin America, and he overwhelmingly won two 
elections--free and fair elections, I must add, contrary to liberal 
allegations. Indeed, one of his bigger vote shares came from 
Salvadorans living outside the country, including in the United States, 
far removed from any supposed intimidation or coercion inside El 
Salvador.
  It is not surprising because, after years of bloodshed, the Bukele 
government is bringing stability and safety to a country that 
desperately needs it, which is also good for America. There has been a 
40-percent drop in illegal Salvadoran migrants arriving at our border.
  No, Joe Biden doesn't oppose President Bukele for good or fairminded 
reasons. He opposes President Bukele because he is tough on El 
Salvador's murderous gangs, the most prominent of which is MS-13, a 
group with the psychotic motto ``kill, rape, control.''
  Our own country has experience with this sadistic gang. In 2017, not 
far from here in Wheaton, MD, members of MS-13 beheaded a man, cut his 
heart out, and stabbed him over 100 times. The year before, members of 
the gang murdered two teenage girls on Long Island, NY, using baseball 
bats and a machete. And just last year, an illegal immigrant member of 
MS-13 in California was convicted of torturing and murdering a 10-year-
old boy. Let me say that again. He tortured and murdered a 10-year-old 
boy.
  That is what MS-13 has done here in America, the richest and most 
powerful Nation in the world. It has done far worse to the people of El 
Salvador. And MS-13 isn't alone. Factions of the infamous 18th Street 
gang also terrorized the country. Before the government's crackdown, 
more than 100,000 gang members and associates roamed the streets of the 
nation of fewer than 6\1/2\ million people. For years, they waged war 
with each other and the government, turning neighborhoods and cities 
into ungovernable battlefields. They would impress preteen boys into 
their gangs or demand preteen girls provide sexual favors--or they 
would kill the whole family and still take the boy or girl.

  As a result, El Salvador has long been one of the most dangerous 
nations on Earth. Indeed, it was so dangerous that many of my 
Democratic colleagues have argued that those fleeing the country should 
automatically be eligible for asylum here. In late March 2022, 2 years 
ago, the nation reached its breaking point when gang members committed 
87 murders in a single weekend, killing more people in 3 days than were 
killed in the entirety of the previous month. Tragically, March 26, 
2022, marked the deadliest day in El Salvador since the end of that 
nation's civil war 30 years ago.
  Finally, people had had enough. President Bukele requested the 
declaration of a state of emergency, and the National Assembly agreed. 
The government surged troops throughout the country, overwhelming the 
gangs and arresting and imprisoning its members. One active gang member 
told reporters:

       There were too many soldiers everywhere all at once.

  According to recent estimates, the Bukele government has imprisoned 
more than 75,000 gang members and killed hundreds more. President 
Bukele's prison-or-death anti-gang strategy has worked. In 2022, the 
number of murders in El Salvador dropped nearly 57 percent and then 
dropped another 70 percent last year. In 2018, the Salvadoran murder 
rate stood at 53 per 100,000. Last year, it was 2.4 per 100,000. For 
context, Washington, DC, had a murder rate of 40 per 100,000 last year. 
That means I was much safer 2 days ago in what was once the murder 
capital of the world than any of us today are in Joe Biden's 
Washington.
  Yet Joe Biden, one of the least popular, least successful, and most 
pro-criminal leaders in the world, is lecturing one of the hemisphere's 
most popular and accomplished Presidents on crime. In particular, the 
Biden administration has expressed concern that the emergency 
declaration, which suspends certain due process protections, is a 
threat to the rule of law--apparently, an even greater threat than the 
marauding thousands of gang members still at large.

[[Page S2486]]

  President Biden evidently doesn't understand that order is a 
prerequisite for law. Indeed, it is a prerequisite for nationhood. 
Without order and the state's monopoly on force, you don't have a 
country, and you certainly can't have a democracy.
  Perhaps President Bukele's tactics are harsh. I don't think so, but I 
will grant you that. But they were also absolutely necessary to 
establish order. And I would remind the Biden administration that El 
Salvador's gang members aren't victims; they are murderers, rapists, 
and many of them have American blood on their hands.
  I saw up close thousands of these savages--or devils, as President 
Bukele puts it--when I toured the Terrorism Confinement Center, the 
massive new prison housing tens of thousands of gang members. The 
inmates live together by the dozens in group cells. They don't go 
outside. They don't take classes. They don't get visitors. Most will 
never leave.
  Armed guards are everywhere you turn inside the triple-walled prison, 
including on the steel-grate ceilings so guards can monitor the inmates 
from above. Some so-called human rights groups whine about this prison. 
I guess they think it is too harsh. And it is not Club Med, I will 
concede, but the inmates receive food and water, they conduct personal 
hygiene daily, and doctors and nurses work at an aid station next to 
the cells.
  Those same groups also complain about a supposed lack of due process. 
I don't know. Call me crazy, but if it is illegal to belong to a gang 
and you have got MS-13 tattoos all over your face and body, I am not 
sure what more process you are due. Maybe that is just me.
  No, the victims aren't the devils I encountered at the Terrorism 
Confinement Center. The people of El Salvador are the victims. After 
years of abuse, law-abiding Salvadorans, particularly those from poor 
and working classes, overwhelmingly support President Bukele's efforts 
to restore order and a meaningful rule of law.
  I am hopeful that El Salvador's leaders will help bring stability and 
prosperity to a nation that deserves better than gangland terrorism, 
and I urge the administration that if it is unwilling to help, at least 
stay out of the way.
  Finally, the example of El Salvador not only exposes the failures of 
President Biden's approach to foreign policy but also his approach to 
crime. If nothing else, President Bukele has proven once again that 
incarceration works, obviously. If you lock up murderers, amazingly 
enough, there will be fewer murders--a truth so obvious that only 
liberal ideologues could miss it.
  Sadly, that is what we have in many places in today's criminal 
justice system: progressive lawyers who refuse to prosecute criminals; 
progressive judges who refuse to sentence them appropriately; and 
progressive politicians who pass jailbreak bills to release them. So 
long as we continue to pursue these progressive policies, our 
communities will, sadly, continue to look more and more like El 
Salvador--not the El Salvador of today but of just a few years ago.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.