Transcript of The Controversial Measures Fueling El Salvador's 'Reverse Migration'

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

And this is what's happening. Ever since former President Donald Trump made that wild, racist, and false claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, on the debate stage earlier this month, that city has been turned upside down. Dozens of bomb threats have closed hospitals. Some schools moved to online learning. An annual arts and culture festival that was supposed to take place this weekend canceled.

We feel like people are acting based on fear, panicking.

And the Haitian community itself, it's confusion.

And when CNN went to Springfield earlier this week, the damage all that fear mongering had done on the Haitian community there was plain to see.

I was feeling a little bit down I feel better right now. My teachers, coworkers, friends, they reach out to me somehow, asking me, How are you holding up? Okay, we love you. We need you here. You still see Springfield as a of the whole place.

It is.

Now, this whole episode does not negate the very real concerns many Americans have about the stress and influx of migrants can have on their city's resources, nor does it invalidate the lives of those immigrants in Springfield, there legally, we should say, who have made the difficult choice to leave their home country in search of a better life. Our reporters hear that all the time from migrants who arrive at the US Southern border. They don't necessarily want to leave places like Venezuela or Guatemala or Haiti. But economic hardship or extreme violence makes having a career or raising a family impossible. But what happens if things actually get better in that home country? Would they go back? My guest is CNN Senior National Correspondent David Culver. We're going to talk about how El Salvador has pulled off a migration transformation, but one that might come with a serious cost. From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Ryan.

So, David, you cover immigration for CNN. You and I have spoken about what that looks like at the US-Mexico border, but you are recently back from one of the countries that many migrants are coming from, El Salvador.

What did you find there?

Interesting in that over the past, I would say, several months, I've been hearing from folks from El Salvador, and they have been encouraging me, David, to go back to El Salvador to get a sense of what life is like there and why the numbers of migrants are actually down. It's down compared to the past couple of years by about 36% or so, and this year is projected to be down another roughly 6%. So this is significant in that we wondered, well, why is it that El Salvador is seeing this decline in folks wanting to leave? And we found something else there, and that is people wanting to go back.

Well, so what's the reason? Why are less people leaving?

The name you hear over and over and over is Bukele.. This is a guy who, at 37 in 2019, became the country's President.

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Came in with this very controversial approach of wanting to eradicate the gangs in corruption, which many politicians run on that platform. Sure. But he's come forward with tactics that a lot of people have questioned. Human rights groups say there's widespread abuses here. Critics say that he's just tightening his control, that he's an authoritarian, we've heard dictator. We wondered how that was being felt on the ground. One thing you cannot deny is that people feel safer. How would you describe this area? I don't know, three or four years ago.

It was totally different. It was totally dangerous.

We went, to give you an example, around a public street in a very once notoriously gang-infested neighborhood.

We had in the past some police, but the police or the military says nothing because they had the control, the terror control.

They wouldn't even feel safe enough to enter an area like this. Yes. As we were walking with the defense minister, we obviously had a lot of security around us. I was wearing body armor, and so I was prepared for what could be at any moment, violence coming in our way, given how deep-rooted MS 13 was in this particular neighborhood.

I like to do this.

. He said, May God bless you.

Yes. God bless you. They said that. Yeah, because they are happy.

We had a lot of people looking at us, locking on to us, and then approaching us, but it wasn't what we expected.

.

They wanted photos with defense minister. I mean, it felt like a victory parade. You've got this sense from person after person. We said, Why are you feeling this way? Why the joy? One woman broke into tears, and she said, Only God knows what it was like here before.

Well, so what does that cleanup effort actually look like? What are the methods that they're using?

You're talking about tens of thousands of arrests. The count right now is more than 81,000 people arrested. And so the question is, well, where do you put them? Well, the most hardened gang members are said to be in this place called Sikot, which is the Terrorism Confinement Center. It's newly built. It holds roughly 40,000 inmates Currently, the government says there are some 14,000 being held there. They wouldn't let us in. And yet, they gave us access to some of the lesser security prisons, which in fairness, few have seen. And that was an interesting space to go into because that's where you have the majority of the people who are arrested, and they're put to work. They're putting together a desk here. They're just showing. I think they were just sitting there. They've all stopped working to keep quiet for us. I mean, they're making government uniforms. They're building desks for local schools. They're in the community repainting things that had gang insignia all over it, demolishing tombstones that looked more like memorials to MS 13 gang leaders. Here, they've turned on the lights They're going to show us some of the designs that they've made for books and for government paperwork, it looks like, too.

It looks like a calendar here. The way the government sees this is as a rehabilitation program. But the concern is that many innocent people have been swept up in these mass arrests. And Bukele has basically admitted that, yeah, that's possible, but that's the price you pay in order to turn a country around. One guy in particular was arrested, says he was arrested because somebody had autonomously called police and said he looked like a gang member with his tattoos. He was put into custody for five months. I asked him what he thought of Bukele. He goes, Well, you can't deny things are safer. He even said, The fact that you're in our home right now talking to us, well, that would have been unthinkable just two years back.

So even though he was swept up and put away for a baseless thing, he just feels safer, and other people do, too.

He's angry still, and he wants some, I think, acknowledgement for the pain he's had to endure, and he even had to go to the hospital. But he did not deny that things were safer, which was interesting to us. We met the mom of another man who's been detained.. He's been in jail for at least two years. She's not in touch with him.. How do you feel now in this? She says it's safe. And she said, Look, her neighborhood now is called La Campanera. La Campanera was a major hub for MS 13 within the capital, San Salvador. And she said before, nobody would visit her, not even her family. She says now she's able to walk around her neighborhood. She doesn't have to pay the extortion payments that were essentially labeled as rent..

She says that She's in a space where she feels like despite her son being detained, which is really hurting her economically, she does feel like security is a lot better, though she wants her son released.

David, you said earlier that people who had fled El Salvador because of the gang violence and the economic struggles that come along with that are now coming back to the country. What goes into a decision like that?

One couple we met was Victor and Blanca Bolanos, and they, for 15 years, lived in Denver, Colorado. She's saying they left in 2003 to the US because the situation here economically was really bad. They left El Salvador back in 2003. So this was after having obviously gone through the '80s and '90s, the Civil War, after having to deal with then the surgence of gangs, MS 13 and 18th Street in particular. They had three college-age sons who they left behind. But their idea was, We're going to go to the US, we're going to work, and we're eventually going to bring our boys here, and they can then build their future in the US. Well, we meet them in San Salvador, and they've been back in the country for about six years. They took a voluntary departure order, basically saying that they didn't want to be fully deported, so they to go forward and leave the United States after losing their asylum claim. So it was still really active even just a few years ago. Everything belonged to the gangs. But when they went back to El Salvador six years ago, they said it was still very, very dangerous, and they were really concerned.

But.

What's changed in the past few years has motivated them to not only want to stay, but open a business, and they now see their future back in El Salvador with their grandkids being so little but feeling like they can actually take them to parks. They can walk around the neighborhood. Things that they said you just could not do before. Oh, wow. How do I eat it? Do I eat? Do I just eat?

What we do, we open the pupusas. You open it. Then we put the coverage, then we put the sauce, and then you eat it.

We went to this pupuceria. So pupuza is obviously a staple in El Salvador. It was incredibly popular, and there's a long line outside. It turns out that President Bukele, who's a millennial, tweeted that this pupuceria would get free coffee if they discounted their popusas. Basically, ordered this local business to do this. Is it President's coffee that you're giving away?

Yes, it is the President nice coffee, and you can taste it. It's not a cheap coffee. It's a really good coffee.

But it was a huge marketing boom for this little café in Pukele, because if you walk into this place, you see modified tweets of Bukele. You see murals of him. You really care for him.

That's right.

He's almost revered in some of these places. The owner says, Look, I think he saved my son's lives. He said, My sons would have been recruited by gangs or killed themselves.

Just of what he did with the The security of the country, I am pleased. I don't need anything else. There's a lot of people that are coming like you guys. You are coming here. True. Because of that. Just because to see how safe the country is now.

There's a lot of curious Hey. I'm David. Nice to meet you. But as I was walking out, I heard my name being shouted by somebody who happened to be from the DC area, where I'm from. He said, I want you to meet my wife, Jessica. We just flew in. She left in the '80s during the Civil War. She was a kid. She's back for the first time. Hey, Jessica. You're from Centerville. I'm from Fairfax Station.

Oh, you are?

Yeah. Where are you? We're from Centerville. We're from Centerville. Hi, you guys. We go upstairs They're with extended family. She says that she's just trying to process it all. She seemed to be in shock. Now I walk around and maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any remnants of any game activity or violence.

I don't either. I was like, this It can't be the country that I used to care about, the violence of MS 13. I was like, This can't be the same country. There's no way because I don't see that.

I'm grateful that we're able to be back here, that I can bring my kids. But she said, For me, what's just still a struggle is to think of how many years have been lost.

Now I'm sad that I've lost so many years and now I have seen my family for 30 something years. But it's nice to be back.

And your kids are connecting with their blood.

Their blood, yeah.

I mean, how should we think about all this when it comes to the very real concerns about the impacts of legal and legal immigration in communities in the US? Because we obviously hear the presidential candidates talking about this and their different approaches to how to handle it. Like, Harris is talking about securing the border. Trump takes it way further, talks about the idea of mass deportations. But will it take a controversial crackdown of gangs, that consolidation of political power that you talk about, financial incentives in these other countries to encourage people to come back and discourage them from coming to the US-Mexico border in search of a better life here.

I think there are a few takeaways from this. One, you mentioned former President Trump. He has name dropped El Salvador and has said, Well, their murders are down significantly because they're sending their murderers, they're sending their prisoners across the US Southern border and into the US. We took that question to the security minister, Viatoro, in El Salvador. He says, That is simply not true. Go look at our prisons. But it does bring up the question of, How then do you tackle the US Southern border? It's a place that I've been many times, and you realize the question has to be answered at the borders before the border. That is to say, you've got to go to the root causes of this migration. Do you think because the security now is better here, do you think the economy will follow?

You think it'll get better? Mucho mejor.

And you think the economy will get better because security is better? Yes. Absolutely. It does feel like, and perhaps it's just common sense, when people feel like they have security, when they have stability, one migrant And Victor Bolaño, told me this directly, When you feel like you have an opportunity, you're not going to go anywhere. You're going to stay. You always wanted to come home. Yeah. But did you ever think you would be able to?

Because this is my home. This is my home. This is my country.

But despite looking at this as controversial, as even having some compassion for those who have been taken into custody, most people who we have encountered down there, and people here who are considering going back, say they're willing to look past that.

President Bukele started doing things. So he's a smart man. He know what he's doing, and he just got a miracle.

We should point out, I've been to several countries now in the past year and a half across Latin America. We're from Mexico to Ecuador to Colombia, Panama to Haiti. And Bukele is mentioned over and over. People often say, We wish he was our leader in this country. So the question that I've posed to even some of the US lawmakers who are on both sides of the aisle, very much in support of the El Salvador solution, as they say. But one Democratic congressman said, Look, this is really promising. At the At the same time, we have to look closely at the human rights abuses and the basically elimination of any due process for certain people. And he said, At the end of this term, Buckele needs to leave. Otherwise, we're going to have issues.

I was going to say, you hear the stuff about the hero worship aspect of it and the consolidation of power, and my mind goes to Venezuela and what's happening there. That is obviously on the other end of the spectrum that I assume the US doesn't want to see either.

I think if we're still talking about a President Bukele 15 years from now, it's going to potentially be in a very different context. I think people really want to see what he's created sustain as far as security is concerned. They want to see the economy continue to improve, but at the same time, they want to see a transition of power that sustains a democracy.

Because you get down that path, and then you see people leave just like before because of those reasons. Exactly. And you get into this in the cycle. That's right. Really interesting. David Culver. Thank you.

Thanks, David.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Fez Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manessari, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamie Sandrace, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Avelio Contreras, Wendy Brundage, and Katie Hinman.

We will be back on Wednesday with another episode. I will talk to you then.