In 2015, El Salvador was the most violent nation in the Western Hemisphere. Last year, it was listed as one of the safest nations on the planet.
The reason: President Nayib Bukele cracked down on gangs and built a massive prison to house their members — forever.
But Bukele’s anti-crime campaign has done more than make El Salvador safer. He’s made the country safer than top tourist destinations in Europe, U.S. State Department travel advisories show. As Europe has spent years importing criminal and terrorist “migrants” and loosing them in the streets, El Salvador has been tossing its native-born gang members — now considered terrorists and slated for deportation under President Donald Trump’s executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act — in prison.
Violent to Peaceful, Travel Advisory Change
The story of El Salvador’s transformation might be traced to 2015.
“El Salvador ended the year with at least 6,640 murders,” Insight Crime reported, citing La Prensa Gráfica:
The grisly statistic represents close to a 70 percent increase over 2014 homicides and gives the country a homicide rate of 104.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, the report said.
El Salvador makes up 13.6 percent of Central America’s population, yet represents 35.3 percent of Central America’s homicides, the report added.
The violence came to a head over the March 25-27 weekend in 2022, when gangs murdered 87 people. Bukele declared a state of emergency and began his crackdown. Some 600 gang members were arrested. By June, the total was 43,000, Reuters reported. The same month, members of The 18th Street gang murdered three cops. Bukele vowed vengeance, which included sending prison inmates to destroy the gravestones of gang leaders. By November, the Associated Press reported, 56,000 gang members were in custody.
All those arrests ended in greatly reduced crime, with Salvadorans less worried about “human rights” than walking about safely. “Salvadorans I talked with recalled feeling ‘liberated’ by the roundups,” Atlantic writer Gisela Salim-Peyer reported. “They no longer had to show their IDs to gang members and pay fees when they went to visit relatives in another town. They discovered new freedoms — like barhopping at night in San Salvador.”
Thus did the State Department change its travel advisory on April 8 to Level 1, “Exercise Normal Caution.”
“Gang activity has decreased over the last three years,” the advisory says. “This has caused a drop in violent crimes and murders.” Federal employees can travel freely, although they are still forbidden from traveling widely at night, except to and from El Salvador’s international airport.
The advisory credits Bukele’s declaration of a “state of exception.
In 2024, the Gallup Global Safety report listed El Salvador in its top 10 countries “where people feel safest when walking alone”: 88 percent of those polled said they felt safe.
As well, the same poll rated El Salvador higher than the United States on its law-and-order index, 89-81.
“El Salvador just got the U.S. State Department’s travel gold star: Level 1: safest it gets,” Bukele wrote on X.
Terror Warnings in Europe
Meanwhile, during the past two years, the U.S. State Department has elevated its advisories across seven European nations because of terrorism.
On July 26, 2023, France and Belgium received Level 2 advisories, “Exercise Increased Caution.”
“Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Belgium,” its advisory says:
Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, local government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, major sporting, music, and cultural events, educational institutions, airports, and other public areas.
The advisory for France sounds like a warning before entering a warzone.
“Incidents such as pickpocketing and phone snatchings occur frequently and can happen anywhere, especially in crowded areas such as airports, train stations, subway and train cars, and near tourist attractions,” the advisory says:
Peaceful demonstrations and strikes in Paris and other cities throughout France occur regularly and can disrupt transportation. On rare occasions, demonstrations have included violence and property damage and police have responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Last year, advisories for Italy, Spain, Germany, and Great Britain likewise recommended exercising “increased caution” because of possible terrorist attacks. Another Level 2 nation: once-safe Sweden.
All the nations have one thing in common: the mass importation of Islamic “migrants” bent on conquering the West demographically, and demoralizing its population with terror, crime, and mass rapes. In England, Muslim grooming gangs have raped upwards of 250,000 British girls. On New Year’s Eve 2015-2016, Arabs and North Africans assaulted and/or raped more than 1,200 women in more than a dozen German cities, and in the state of Thuringia, “migrant” criminals terrorize train employees and passengers on a regular basis. In France, the “migrants” celebrate New Year’s by setting hundreds of cars ablaze. Almost 1,000 vehicles went up in flames in 2025.
Terror attacks include last year’s attack involving a Saudi national who plowed into marketgoers in Magdeburg, Germany, leaving 11 dead.
In June 2017, three ISIS terrorists plowed into pedestrians on London Bridge, then fled the vehicle and embarked on a stabbing rampage, murdering eight and injuring 48. That followed a suicide bomber attack at a concert in May that left 22 dead, and similar vehicle-knife attack in Westminster in March that murdered five.
In 2016, a Tunisian “asylum seeker” drove a semi-trailer truck into the Christmas Market in Berlin. He murdered 12 and injured 56. Police killed him in a shootout in Milan, Italy. ISIS claimed responsibility for the mass murder.
Also in 2016, a Tunisian plowed a 19-ton cargo truck into Bastille Day revelers in Nice, France. He murdered 86 and injured 434.
