Bukele’s lessons in defeating crime

OPINION:

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele visited the Oval Office on Monday. The Central American leader came to Washington to strengthen his friendship with President Trump, and their relationship was on display as the pair fielded questions from the media.

Mr. Bukele related his experience tackling the outbreak of lawlessness in his nation. “We actually turned the ‘murder capital of the world’ — that’s what the journalists called it — into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere,” he said. “Sometimes they say we imprisoned thousands. I like to say we liberated millions.”

A decade ago, the homicide rate peaked at 105 per 100,000 citizens. It’s now 2.4. That’s seven times safer than the District of Columbia.

The State Department recently recognized El Salvador’s progress by replacing the “Do not travel” warning for U.S. visitors with the standard “Exercise normal precautions” advice. The latter rating is reserved for developed nations with excellent safety records. Some European countries, including France and Denmark, no longer qualify for the honor “due to terrorism.”

Europe’s freewheeling immigration policies are responsible for transforming the continent into a haven for dangerous overseas villains. Democrats in the United States adopted the same globalist attitude, inviting the entire world to move in unvetted.

The result, Mr. Trump reminds us, was that Latin American states opened their jails and sent cutthroats and thieves swarming across our borders. That’s one way for them to reduce their crime rate, but Mr. Bukele proposes another for us. “To liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some,” he said. “That’s the way it works. You can’t just free the criminals and think crime is going to go down magically.”

Unwilling to let go of their magical thinking, left-wing activists decry El Salvador’s treatment of lawbreakers as barbaric. Yet, it’s the Democrats who celebrate barbarism. Mr. Trump asked his Salvadoran friend whether his country allowed men to compete in women’s sports, such as boxing.

“That’s violence,” Mr. Bukele responded. “That’s abuse of a woman. … We’re big on protecting women.”

The Democrats who want to watch biological men pummel women are pushing for the release of illegal alien criminals into the country, citing the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Mr. Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador found by an immigration judge in 2019 to be a likely member of the violent MS-13 gang. He was shipped to a maximum-security prison outside San Salvador last month.

A U.S. district court judge in Maryland demanded that Mr. Trump “effectuate” this noncitizen’s return to the United States because, six years ago, the immigration court believed Mr. Abrego Garcia’s claim that he would be unsafe in El Salvador. The Supreme Court lowered the request to asking the president to “facilitate” his release from custody.

Mr. Bukele responded harshly when asked whether he would comply. “I hope you’re not suggesting I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” he said. “Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. … You want us to go back to releasing criminals? It’s not going to happen.”

That simple, commonsense answer is why the young leader of El Salvador won reelection with landslide margins last year and now enjoys a sky-high approval rating of more than 90%. The public overwhelmingly endorses his approach to eliminating gang violence.

Republicans growing squeamish about Mr. Trump’s border policies can learn a few lessons from Central America.