US Immigration Program with El Salvador will Fail

In its first plenary session on Saturday, May 1, El Salvador’s recently-elected Legislative Assembly, controlled by the government-aligned party, Nuevas Ideas, set aside constitutional procedure in removing five magistrates of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber and substituting them with judges loyal to President Nayib Bukele. Minutes later, the Assembly removed Attorney General Raúl Melara and replaced him with former lead prosecutor for organized crime, Rodolfo Delgado. Both decisions —approved with 64 of 84 Assembly votes thanks to the additional support of GANA, the PCN, and PDC— are efforts to remove the last institutional checks on the president’s power since he took office in 2019, and whose party notched a blistering victory, one vote short of a supermajority, this February 28.

Bukele’s Legislative Assembly Ousts Supreme Court Magistrates and Attorney General