El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is a Gleeful “Puppet” of the United States

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on April 16, 2025

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.

An Editorial Opinion

"Yankee imperialism" has returned to Central America. Once again, a Central American president is ingratiating himself to an American president on the world stage.

During his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he will not return Kilmar Abrego García, a migrant from Maryland who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration.

García has committed no crime in the U.S. or El Salvador. He was living in the U.S. under the authority and protection of a court order, from which the U.S. government never appealed. Yet, the Trump administration snatched García off the streets and arranged for his imprisonment in El Salvador. As an act of political subservience and obedience to Trump, Bukele will not return him.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate García’s return to the U.S. Trump has refused to do so.

El Salvador

El Salvador is a small Central American country with a population of 6.1 million people. It experienced presidential coups and/or attempted coups in 1931, 1941, 1972, 1979, 2020, and 2021.

The U.S. government has a long history of funding death squads in the country. The death squads were fascist groups that murdered, tortured, and raped their political opponents. The death squad apparatus was rampant between 1960 and 1992. The U.S. paid the El Salvadoran government more than $6 billion to exterminate more than 75,000 labor organizers, workers, peasants, and students between 1980 and 1992.

Nayib Bukele is a "Puppet" of the United States Government

Since January 2025, Bukele has prostrated himself before the alter of Donald Trump. He is a willing and gleeful “puppet” of the U.S. government.

Recently, the U.S. has paid the El Salvadoran government $6 million USD to house about 238 Venezuelan migrants who were rounded up and flown to El Salvador with no "due process" hearings, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution and required by the U.S. Supreme Court. Out of the 238 deportees, 179 have zero criminal record in the U.S. or abroad. Yet they were arrested and, with no due process, sent to a torturing prison in El Salvador.

Venezuela is a South America country with a population of 28.3 million people. It has experienced presidential coups and/or attempted coups in 1908, 1945, 1948, 1958, 1992 (twice), and 2002. Its president is Nicolás Maduro Moros, whom the U.S. despises.

In March 2020, Maduro was charged in a Southern District of New York federal indictment with narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices in violation of Title 21 U.S.C. §§ 960a and 963, and 18 U.S.C. § 924. The government is offering a $25 million reward for information that leads to his arrest.

Allegations of CIA "Bribery" Swirl Around Nayib Bukele

There are unconfirmed reports and allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has funneled an undisclosed amount of "bribery" money to a secret bank account controlled by Bukele in exchange for his complicity in the Trump administration’s “no due process” deportation scheme. According to these reports and allegations, Nayib Bukele has not disclosed his receipt of the "bribery" money to El Salvadoran military leaders or the cabinet ministers with portfolio responsibility for carrying out Trump's deportation scheme. Likewise, he has reportedly failed to share this money with these in-country officials.

It is well-established that the CIA has paid "bribes" to the leaders of foreign countries -- allies and enemies alike -- since the agency was formed on September 18, 1947. Bribery is a standard CIA operating tool for influencing government actions in foreign countries.

Bukele's Likely Fate

If Bukele does not promptly send the Venezuelan deportees to Venezuela, politicos in the region expect there will be a military coup against him in El Salvador or a Maduro-backed assassination attempt on his life.

Before he was president, Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials. He has a long and distinguished record of assassinating his perceived enemies in the region.

Finally, the presidents of Central and South American countries who serve as gleeful, ingratiating "puppets" of the U.S. government and who do not share the CIA's "bribery" money don't usually last long.