Before Regretting ICE Vote, Suozzi Praised Accused Torturer of Deportees
At El Salvador prayer breakfast, Suozzi told Bukele, "You've achieved a miracle"
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Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) on Monday suggested that he had “failed” to hear his constituents’ anger about him voting to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes the immigrant-focused agencies that have killed two people in Minneapolis.
“I hear the anger from my constituents, and I take responsibility for that,” Suozzi wrote.
Referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Suozzi wrote, “I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.”
One week earlier, however, Suozzi was in El Salvador, praising the Salvadoran president who took in ICE captives and allegedly tortured them. Pres. Nayib Bukele even offered to let the Trump administration cage American citizens in his abusive prisons.
Suozzi has not explained his support for Bukele, has not addressed his participation in Bukele’s Jan. 19 National Prayer Breakfast, and has not responded to my request for comment.
The breakfast was held in San Salvador and was part of a House committee junket. Suozzi was a featured speaker. He suggested that Bukele has God’s imprimatur and active intervention.
“[Y]ou’ve achieved a miracle,” Suozzi said, addressing Bukele directly, “the miracle that’s taken place in El Salvador.”
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) chairs the House committee on countering China’s influence and led the delegation ostensibly focused on that issue. Speaking alongside Suozzi, Moolenaar told Bukele, “I see an answer to prayer as to what’s been happening in El Salvador under your leadership.”
Moolenaar added, “[W]hen I see what’s happening here, it’s a beautiful thing and a testimony to your leadership and God’s providence and to Him be the glory.” Suozzi responded, “Amen. Good job.”
Before the substance of their remarks had been reported, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), co-founder of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, criticized the event.
“Why all the cheerleading for a rightwing dictator and his evangelical prayer breakfast,” Huffman said. “What does that have to do with countering China?”
Bukele is not only accused of systemic human rights abuses, he’s bragged about them, calling himself a dictator, and posting video of shackled U.S. prisoners forced to hunch over as they walked. When a U.S. judge tried to block deportation flights, Bukele posted:
Oopsie…
Too late 😂
Speakers at El Salvador’s prayer breakfast, the nation’s first, didn’t mention China. They didn’t even sing the praises of American democracy. Instead, they celebrated Jesus and Bukele and encouraged more prayer breakfasts.
Coverage of the event by regional and religious news outlets reflected the tone of the remarks from Suozzi and other members of Congress there.
“US politicians praise Bukele’s ‘miracle’ at 1st Salvadoran National Prayer Breakfast” — National Catholic Reporter
“US CONGRESSISTS RECOGNIZE THE ADVANCES OF EL SALVADOR” — Diario La Huella
There’s every indication that the event — and the trip itself — was engineered to boost Bukele and draw him closer to the right-wing Christians who run the global network of prayer breakfasts.
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The organization behind the U.S. breakfast and its international spinoffs is the Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family. Moolenaar is a longtime insider, discipled as a young man by a Michigan millionaire at the suggestion of Fellowship leader Doug Coe, now deceased.
At a private meeting with Bukele the day before the breakfast, the only outside participants listed on a copy of the itinerary that I obtained were two American Fellowship leaders and two Guatemalan prayer breakfast leaders.
None is a known scholar of Chinese soft power.
The Fellowship has a history of cozying up to dictators with records even worse than Bukele’s, pushing them to the right and toward Jesus, in name if not philosophy. The Salvadoran breakfast was organized by The Fellowship’s Guatemalan offshoot.
The Guatemalan organizer on the dais at the Salvadoran breakfast was also a key figure in The Fellowship’s covert — and successful — effort to kill a UN anti-corruption task force before it could take down Guatemala’s evangelical president, Jimmy Morales.
In fact, at the height of that scheme, The Fellowship’s man in Guatemala was Morales’s ambassador to the U.S. And he had a one-on-one meeting with Suozzi.
Suozzi, too, has a years-long history with The Fellowship. He has co-chaired past events and kept secret some of his related work.
Just last year I reported that he was continuing to help The Fellowship out even after their most recent Uganda efforts became known.
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According to the itinerary for this month’s junket, the Salvadoran prayer breakfast was followed by an hour-long meeting with the president of El Salvador’s legislature “in ‘C Street’ format.” No explanation is given, suggesting some of the congressional travelers had prior experience with meetings at The Fellowship’s notorious C Street townhouse in Washington.
And this month’s prayer breakfast is hardly Bukele’s first contact with powerful Fellowship insiders.
The deal for Bukele to imprison deportees of the Trump administration was brokered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose Fellowship history includes helping to kill that UN task force in Guatemala.
It was the State Department under Rubio that handed Bukele as much as $6 million to imprison ICE captives.
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Also in his first year as secretary, Rubio scrubbed the State Department’s annual human-rights report of discussion about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prescribes execution for some LGBTQ+ offenses. That bill was pushed and defended by Fellowship allies and insiders.
El Salvador’s human-rights issues were also off the menu at this month’s prayer breakfast.
Reportedly, Suozzi and three other congressional Democrats met the day before, on Jan. 18, with civil-rights groups and opposition leaders. The meeting included complaints about Bukele’s human-rights violations, El Mundo reported.
One participant told the outlet that Suozzi and the other Democrats heard about journalists and private charities fleeing the country due to persecution, “arbitrary arrests … [and] deaths in prisons.”
This was four days before Suozzi voted to keep funding ICE and the rest of DHS, and one day before he publicly praised Bukele.
But on the morning of Jan. 19, Suozzi’s remarks didn’t reflect the concerns shared with him the day before. Instead, in remarks broadcast on national television, Suozzi addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, and Bukele directly at times, saying:
“We are so inspired by everything we’ve learned here in El Salvador. You’ve been through wars, the civil war, the war against the gangs, the war against crime. You’ve been through so much trauma. And you’ve achieved a miracle, as I hope the president will talk about today, the miracle that’s taken place in El Salvador.
Those criminal “wars” were Bukele’s predicate for implementing emergency powers in 2022 that remain in effect today. They include curtailing basic due process and other rights.
The nature of Bukele’s miracle remains unclear because there’s no independent accounting for the government’s crime statistics. And there are allegations that lower rates of violence resulted from deals Bukele struck with partners in the gangs.
Another factor is Bukele tossing tens of thousands of people in prison. A recent 60 Minutes report chronicled allegations of abuse within Bukele’s new high-security prison where U.S. deportees were sent.
Writing for the National Catholic Reporter, Rhina Guidos called out Suozzi for his discordant message. Without naming Suozzi, the outlet referred to “Catholic politicians from the U.S.” who “called the country's drastic reduction in crime — due in part to mass incarceration of gang members as well as innocent Salvadorans — a ‘miracle’ from God.”
Guidos went directly at Suozzi in one passage, contrasting his claims point by point with reality:
“Suozzi spoke of how El Salvador's event brought together ‘so many people of different faiths and backgrounds and different political beliefs, all united in the spirit of prayer to make your country and our world a better place.’ But El Salvador is ruled by one political party called Nuevas Ideas, which had its leaders in the room as well as judges friendly to the party appointed to high legal positions in the country. …
“Politicians who oppose the ruling party and its policies are largely ignored and in some cases have been incarcerated, along with others who have called out human rights violations and spoken against the trampling of citizens' rights and basic liberties. Journalists have left the country en masse. Civil and human rights groups also have abandoned the country, fearing reprisal.”
Bukele also signed on to the Trump administration anti-immigration campaign that Suozzi now decries. In April 2025, Bukele called U.S. deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia a “terrorist,” echoing baseless administration accusations that haven’t even been alleged in court.
And Bukele wasted little time brandishing Suozzi’s praise to burnish his image. That night, his office posted a graphic featuring Suozzi discussing how inspired he was:
Suozzi posted about the trip the following day. But his Jan. 20 Instagram post didn’t include Bukele or even the prayer breakfast. Neither did a press release by Moolenaar’s committee, issued a day after I asked his office about the trip and The Fellowship’s involvement.
While Democrats are pushing for the ouster — by impeachment, if necessary — of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Suozzi has yet to sign on. (Ironically, Noem is part of the antisemitic White House Bible study whose leader complains that the National Prayer Breakfast is too soft.)
There’s a reason Suozzi and The Fellowship would put so much emphasis on the prayer breakfast in El Salvador. “I think we should tell everybody about the, our prayer breakfast and what happens in the United States,” Suozzi said to Moolenaar at the podium.
Suozzi wasn’t alone. Republican Fellowship insiders pushed the same line. The Fellowship sponsors weekly prayer breakfasts for members of Congress, in the Senate and the House. Those groups tend to be at the center of the annual, semi-public event.
Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA), a U.S. National Prayer Breakfast co-chair, spoke at the El Salvador breakfast and told Bukele:
“I would encourage you, and for your colleagues in the legislature, colleagues in the court system, colleagues across the agencies, to find opportunities each and every week to gather together to pray in the name of Jesus, to ask for His guidance, because we know that, we know it’s His will that we are doing here on Earth. It’s His will that you are doing here in El Salvador.”
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), a longtime Fellowship insider, picked up where Cline left off, calling weekly prayer breakfasts the key to successful annual ones.
Why the hard sell? Because The Fellowship does its work at the breakfasts and within the relationships that emerge.
In April 2024, for instance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with religious leaders. One of them, whose name was not publicized, was The Fellowship’s point person in Ukraine.
The religious leaders had only one ask: To make Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast an official event, hosted by Zelenskyy. The president, a secular Jewish standup comedian, agreed.
One week after I reported that, The Fellowship’s Ukrainian point man successfully lobbied Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to allow a vote on $61 billion in U.S. aid.
Another example: When Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was under political pressure because international sanctions were hurting his economy, The Fellowship sent a U.S. congressman to the rescue. The sanctions were an answer to Museveni’s LGBTQ+ death penalty, pushed and passed by Fellowship allies.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) told the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast to stand firm behind Museveni. Because The Bible trumped American policy.
As author Jeff Sharlet has written, The Fellowship has a history of pushing Democratic politicians and foreign leaders to the right.
Making their events seem official gives them standing to reel in the rich and politically powerful. Aderholt, in particular, has a history of mischaracterizing Fellowship events as official.
“Mr. President,” Aderholt said to Bukele at the breakfast, “thank you for organizing this.” It was actually organized by the Prospera Foundation, the Guatemalan Fellowship offshoot.
And Aderholt wasn’t shy about the financial angle. Encouraging more prayer events, he urged Bukele to invite non-politicians. But not artists, philosophers or civic leaders.
“I encourage you and members of the Parliament here, different agencies,” Aderholt said, “and even different groups of businessmen, to come together once a week and come and talk about those teachings of Jesus.”
None of the speakers urged Bukele to lift his suspension of civil liberties. Or to end persecution of rivals and critics. Or to stop abusing prisoners.
So Bukele has every reason to play along. And he has no religious background that might conflict with The Fellowship.
He describes himself in flexible terms. He’s not religious, he says. Belongs to no religion. But God speaks to him. And he accepts Jesus. His father was actually an imam.
Bukele may not have prayed for what he got from the prayer breakfast, but he got it anyway: Members of the U.S. Congress praising him and anointing his agenda as the work of God.
And because it was bipartisan, it could be framed as uncontroversial, unanimous. Even though two of the four Democrats on the trip apparently skipped the breakfast.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), another Fellowship ally, spoke at the breakfast, but committee members Reps. Ed Case (D-HI) and Greg Stanton (D-AZ), both part of the delegation, don’t seem to have been there.
The Fellowship knows national leaders may have cynical reasons to act the part. They’re okay with that. They’re comfortable with tyrants and torturers. Who, they like to ask, needs Jesus more?
The important thing to The Fellowship isn’t ethical behavior by rich patrons or national leaders. The important thing is the relationship.
Which The Fellowship now has with Bukele.
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Wow! Great investigating. I just went to an event here on Christian nationalism and boy.
This just reinforces it all. Are they trying to make it a global Cabal? We need to turn the tables on this movement just like Jesus would have.
Damnit, is there no shame left in this despicable Congress of deplorable carpetbaggers?