The U.S. State Department on Tuesday raised El Salvador’s travel rating from Level Two to Level One, the safest rating for American travelers.
The State Department has four levels for travel advisories. Level Four simply advises Americans not to visit the country in question due to “life-threatening risks.”
El Salvador was at Level Three, which advises travelers to “reconsider” their plans because the destination country is considered unsafe, until last November. This was largely due to dangerous criminal activity in the gang-infested country.
In November, the State Department upgraded El Salvador to Level Two, acknowledging a dramatic decrease in gang activity and violent crime under the policies of President Nayib Bukele.
The travel advisory did, however, add a note of caution for travelers who might get swept up in Bukele’s gang crackdown and subjected to the “harsh” conditions of El Salvador’s prisons.
The State Department also felt El Salvador belonged at Level Two due to “infrastructure concerns” that made travel between its cities difficult, particularly at night.
On Tuesday, El Salvador was upgraded to Level One, or “exercise normal precautions,” due to further “changes in crime.” The State Department remained a bit leery of El Salvador’s bus system, and reminded Americans that Bukele’s “state of exception” (that is, his war on gangs) was still in place, increasing the risks of an encounter with law enforcement.
“Keeping Americans safe overseas is our highest priority. President Nayib Bukele’s leadership has been crucial in improving the security of his country for foreign travelers,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday.
“El Salvador just got the U.S. State Department’s travel gold star!” Bukele exclaimed on social media, jubilantly reposting virtually every international media report of the upgrade. He must have particularly enjoyed the Bloomberg News report, which noted El Salvador now has a better safety rating than most of Europe.
Bukele looked forward to increased tourism from the higher safety rating, noting that El Salvador was already enjoying a “tourism boom” in 2025.
“Now, with the updated travel advisory from the U.S. State Department, unmatched security, new infrastructure, and fresh destinations in the works, we’re aiming for new all-time highs,” he said, punctuating his enthusiasm with an emoji of a rocket ship.
Bloomberg suggested El Salvador might be reaping the rewards of Bukele’s excellent relationship with President Donald Trump, especially his willingness to take deported migrant criminals into his tough mega-prisons.
The Bloomberg report nevertheless granted that no matter how enthusiastically Trump and Bukele might be bumping their “iron fists” together, there was no denying the Salvadoran president’s remarkable progress against gangs and violent crime, which has “made the world’s former murder capital less violent than Canada.” If he fixes those public buses, the State Department might just have to invent a Level Zero for him.
