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.

By Kylie Cheung | April 24, 2025 | 4:13pm

Photo: Getty Images

JB Pritzker Steps Up Against Trump’s Inhumane El Salvador Prison Operation

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.”

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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.”

Attorneys for some of the men sent to CECOT and their families say their clients were singled out solely for being Latino and having tattoos. The Trump administration has admitted to mistakenly sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident and father of three who is married to a U.S. citizen, to CECOT. Nonetheless, Bukele has refused to release him, and the Trump administration has lied that it has no power to bring Abrego Garcia home, baselessly smearing him as a member of the MS-13 gang and a “terrorist” to justify his illegal imprisonment in a foreign country.

Earlier this month, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) managed to visit Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. On Sunday, he said on NBC’s Meet the Press that one way to apply pressure to free Abrego Garcia and stop the Trump administration’s horrific Salvadoran prison campaign could be for states to disinvest from El Salvador. “There are also pressures we can put on the government of El Salvador, including through, you know, you know, people deciding not to invest in El Salvador, Americans not traveling to El Salvador,” Van Hollen said. “So I think there are other pressure points.”

According to the New York Times, of the 238 men the U.S. sent to CECOT, only 32 “faced serious criminal accusations or convictions.” And, regardless of accusations or convictions, it’s entirely at odds with the Constitution and human rights to send human beings to a foreign torture camp. Still, the Trump administration has claimed that this operation is somehow necessary for public safety. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi went so far as to heartlessly claim that Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez, who has repeatedly pleaded for her husband to be returned, is “safer” without Abrego Garcia in the country.

Speaking of Vasquez’s safety, this week, she told the Washington Post that she was forced to take her three children, flee her home, and live in a safehouse after the Department of Homeland Security shared a government document that very prominently included her home address. “I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” she said. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”

As usual, the Trump administration’s every accusation aimed at others is entirely warped: They’re the ones endangering us.

Pritzker’s latest directive to disinvest from El Salvador is an important step that every Democratic governor seeking to meaningfully challenge this administration can take right now. Though, of course, I would be remiss not to note that there is another foreign country that states should also disinvest from for killing several Americans over the last year alone, on top of carrying out a blatant and horrific genocide. I see no reason to stop at El Salvador.

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