TECOLUCA, El Salvador (AP) — Costa Rica's security minister toured El Salvador's maximum-security gang prison on Friday as part of his review of the measures that El Salvador has taken to reduce violence caused by powerful street gangs during a now three-year offensive under a state of emergency.
Costa Rica Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde said he was visiting on orders of President Rodrigo Chaves to “see the good practices of the Salvadoran people with the goal of combating crime and to returning rights to all citizens.”
Click to Gallery
Correctional officers stand guard at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025, during a tour by Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, left, tours the armory at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners sit in their cell as Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, center left, tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
A soldier stands guard at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025, during a tour by Costa Rica's Justice and Peace minister. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners sit in their cell as Costa Rica's Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look out from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, left, tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look out from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
In November, Costa Rica bestowed its highest diplomatic honor on El Salvador President Nayib Bukele for his success in lowering levels of violence during his three-year campaign against powerful street gangs.
El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights like access to a lawyer. Some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties.
Homicides have plummeted in El Salvador and the improved security has fueled Bukele’s popularity.
“El Salvador’s rescue from those nefarious claws is also helping the peace in our region,” Chaves said when he presented Bukele with the recognition last year. “The fight against organized crime in any part of Central America is welcome. The reach and influence and bad example of the gangs must be reduced.”
Campos came away impressed by the gang prison Bukele built at the start of the state of emergency where Campos said he saw fundamental rights being respected.
The prison's director Belarmino García showed Campos one of the cells holding about 70 inmates. The prison director instructed the inmates to remove their shirts to show their tattooed torsos and asked some to identify their gang affiliation to show that members of rival gangs were sharing the same cell.
After his tour, Campos said that Costa Rica would not continue allowing criminals to be arrest by police only to see them quickly freed by the judicial system.
“We are going to take all of the good practices” back to Costa Rica “to give Costa Ricans a place of peace and tranquility,” he said.
El Salvador Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro said earlier Friday that El Salvador was pleased to share its experience with Costa Rica, a country that until recently had been a reference for peace, but now struggles with bloodshed like El Salvador once had.
“This is not a question of copy and paste, but rather of learning what we have done and implementing in each country what precisely can be done to rescue thousands of Costa Ricans, thousands of Salvadorans and imprisoning hundreds,” Villatoro said.
El Salvador's new gang prison, where inmates are held in large cells and never allowed outside, has gained more attention in recent weeks after the U.S. government sent nearly 300 migrants, including more than 200 Venezuelans, it accused of having gang ties to be held there.
Costa Rica continues to struggle with historically high homicide numbers.
In 2023, Costa Rica set a homicide record with 907, down somewhat in 2024 to 880. So far this year, the country is on nearly the same homicide pace as last year, according to government data.
Unlike Bukele, Chaves does not hold a majority in Congress and has not remade Costa Rica’s courts to remove opposition.
Costa Rica — long applauded for a robust ecotourism industry, environmental conservation and relative peace — has been wracked by violence in recent years, largely attributed to drug trafficking. Costa Rica has become a key way station for cocaine exports to Europe and the United States.
Associated Press writer Javier Cordoba in San Jose, Costa Rica contributed to this report.
Correctional officers stand guard at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025, during a tour by Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, left, tours the armory at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners sit in their cell as Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, center left, tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
A soldier stands guard at the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025, during a tour by Costa Rica's Justice and Peace minister. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners sit in their cell as Costa Rica's Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look out from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Costa Rica's Justice and Peace Minister Gerald Campos Valverde, left, tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Prisoners look out from their cell as the Costa Rica Justice and Peace minister tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — On a day when stock markets around the world dropped precipitously, Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl led a celebration of the president whose global tariffs sparked the sell-off.
With no mention of the Wall Street roller coaster and global economic uncertainty, Wahl declared his state GOP’s “Trump Victory Dinner” — and the broader national moment — a triumph. And for anyone who rejects President Donald Trump, his agenda and the “America First” army that backs it all, Wahl had an offer: “The Alabama Republican Party will buy them a plane ticket to any country in the world they want to go to.”
Wahl's audience — an assembly of lobbyists and donors, state lawmakers, local party officials and grassroots activists — laughed, applauded and sometimes roared throughout last week's gala in downtown Birmingham, the rare Democratic stronghold in one of the nation’s most Republican states. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. elicited perhaps the most enthusiasm with an unapologetically partisan pitch, even repeating the lie that his father won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.
Yet beyond the cheerleading, there were signs of a more cautious optimism and some worried whispers over Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the particulars of his deportation policy and the aggressive slashing by his Department of Government Efficiency.
That doesn’t mean Trump or Republicans are in danger of losing their grip in Alabama, where the GOP holds all statewide offices, dominates the Legislature and has won every presidential electoral vote since 1980. But it’s a notable wrinkle in a place where there's long been tension between relying on the federal government for funding and jobs, and an embrace of the kind of anti-Washington, anti-establishment populism that has twice propelled Trump to the Oval Office. And any cracks for Trump in Alabama — where he got 65% of the vote in 2024 — could portend trouble elsewhere, as the effects of a seismic shift in U.S. policy reach across the economy and society.
“There are some concerns, some conversations,” said John Merrill, a former secretary of state, over just what Trump’s agenda will mean on the ground. Alabama, he acknowledged, has “been a net recipient” of the very federal government and economic model Trump is upending, meaning it receives more money back from Washington than its taxpayers send the federal government.
“It’s a big risk,” said Merrill, who sported a Trump 45-47 pin on his lapel, a nod to the president's two terms.
Blocks to the south of the complex where Republicans convened sits the multibillion-dollar University of Alabama at Birmingham health system, a regional gem where research depends on grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, listed as a “Silver Sponsor” of the gala, didn't join the Democratic attorneys general suing the Trump administration to stop the cancellation of certain research funding streams Congress already has approved.
Most of the medical services provided at UAB and many other hospitals throughout the state are covered by Medicare and Medicaid, two of the largest federal outlays. Alabama, because its per-capita income ranks among the lower tier among states, has one of the most generous federal match rates for Medicaid funding.
A short drive west toward Tuscaloosa sits a gargantuan Mercedes-Benz complex, one of the earliest examples of foreign auto manufacturers coming to the American South, where state laws are hostile to organized labor. The plants have provided jobs at wages higher than the local norms but in some cases lower than in union shops of the Great Lakes region around Detroit. Many suppliers have followed in the South, but not so many that the assembly plants don’t still import many parts that now will be subject to Trump’s tariffs.
Terry Martin, a county GOP committeeman in Tallapoosa County, said he supports the tariffs as leverage. Trump has “something to bargain with,” Martin said. But, “the parts that are coming from overseas … it’s going to pop it up” in price, he said, at least in the short term.
Agriculture, meanwhile, is still a dominant Alabama industry. Meat processing plants in the North and row crop farms in the South depend on migrant labor that Merrill, the former secretary of state, said involves workers who are in the U.S. both legally and illegally. Alabama, he recalled, passed its own strict immigration bill during Barack Obama's presidency only to roll it back after industry leaders complained of a depleted workforce.
Wahl, in an interview after the gala, took a more nuanced approach than he did at the podium.
“It is possible to secure our border and still take into account migrants who deserve to be here,” he said. “This has to be a two-pronged approach.”
Back in Birmingham, Interstate 65 splits the city. The aging, increasingly congested artery is a local priority for widening. The proposal has support from Alabama's two Republican senators, Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt. U.S. interstate projects, though, are typically a 90-10 split, meaning 90% of the money comes from Washington, 10% from the state.
That funding — along with money for schools, Medicaid and other areas — could be at risk with Trump adviser Elon Musk and DOGE carrying Trump’s blessing to slash spending. GOP lawmakers who control Congress have supported Trump's agenda, which also includes dismantling the Education Department.
Tallapoosa County GOP Chair Denise Bates said “absolutely” there's a possibility DOGE could go too far. “I hope there are guardrails,” she said, noting she was once a local school board member.
“Am I 100% for getting rid of the Department of Education? I can’t say that I am,” she said, adding a phrase similar to Merrill’s description of the state as a whole. “You know, we’re a net receiver.”
Yet for all the caveats offered in one-on-one conversations, the GOP crowd cheered when Tuberville, the former football coach turned Trump acolyte on Capitol Hill, offered a plainspoken defense of Musk and his pop-up agency, telling the crowd, “We're dead broke.” And they roared as he addressed tariffs.
“It's past time we level the playing field and tell the rest of the world to get off their ass and start paying their fair share,” Tuberville said.
Bates argued that Alabama's embrace of Trump's “America First” push is not simply loyalty to the president. She said it reflects generations of voters watching the steel industry decline in Birmingham and, after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted in 1994, the textile industry leaving for Mexico and, eventually, Southeast Asia.
“We just want jobs,” she said.
Still, state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, the longest-serving member of the Alabama Legislature, made clear Trump's visceral appeal, declaring him “the most popular president here since Ronald Reagan, hands down.”
Wahl recalled Trump’s first massive outdoor rally as a presidential candidate: 30,000 people at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, in August 2015.
Wahl, who owns a butterfly farm outside Huntsville, said perhaps the best way to understand Trump and Alabama and this moment of uncertainty is to see a president who, at least to his supporters in the state, has earned the benefit of the doubt.
“He’s going to let everybody know he’s serious,” the chairman said. Trump is “going to bring people to the bargaining table. We’re actually going to see the negotiator conduct business.”
A guest looks over the program for Donald Trump Jr.'s visit to speak at the Alabama Republican Party's Trump Victory Celebration, Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
Alabama Sen. Jabo Waggoner, left, high fives a guest as they wait for Donald Trump Jr. to speak at the Alabama Republican Party's Trump Victory Celebration, Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
Donald Trump Jr. speaks at the Alabama Republican Party's Trump Victory Celebration, Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
Alabama Republican Party Chair, John Wahl, speaks before Donald Trump Jr.'s visit at the Alabama Republican Party's Trump Victory Celebration, Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
Alabama Republican Party Chair, John Wahl, speaks before Donald Trump Jr.'s visit at the Alabama Republican Party's Trump Victory Celebration, Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)
