JB Pritzker Steps Up Against Trump’s Inhumane El Salvador Prison Operation
Pritzker announced that Illinois will boycott investments in El Salvador in retaliation for the country's president, Nayib Bukele, working hand-in-glove with Trump.
Photo: Getty Images
Everything is terrible, but Democrats at every level can—and absolutely must—still do good, or at least useful, things. On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) announced a boycott of Illinois investments in El Salvador in retaliation for the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, working hand-in-glove with the Trump administration to imprison unjustly deported American residents at a facility called CECOT. In a statement, Pritzker accused the Salvadoran government of “aiding the Trump administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional actions.”
“The United States Constitution guarantees due process. We are witnessing Donald Trump erode our fundamental Constitutional rights in real time, and we must fight to restore the balance of power,” the governor’s statement continued. “The State of Illinois will stand up for the Rule of Law and do everything in our power to stop the Trump administration from ripping apart our most basic rights.”
Pritzker’s office says it has directed Illinois pension funds to review whether they invest in companies based in El Salvador, and also ordered the state’s Department of Central Management Services to determine whether state procurement contracts have been granted to El Salvador-based companies.
It’s been over a month since the Trump administration deported over 200 American residents to El Salvador, where they’re now serving life sentences in a maximum security prison notorious for its rampant human rights abuses, all without any due process. Trump has repeatedly made clear he intends to start sending citizens to CECOT, too: “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough,” he told Bukele in the Oval Office last week. The Wall Street Journal then reported that, per Trump’s orders, El Salvador is now preparing to expand CECOT to hold up to 80,000 prisoners and expects “the U.S. to send enough to fill it.”