D.C. Mayor Interrupts Trip to El Salvador to Return for Unite the Right Rally, Protests

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser interrupted her long-planned trade mission to El Salvador to be in the District for the Unite the Right rally and the counterprotests, Telemundo 44 reported.

"I will make a designation that the city administrator makes any decisions that I'm not able to make," she said previously. "But I should say that if I think that I need to be here, I'll be here."

The mayor's staff said there is no indication of an increased threat, but she is returning out of an abundance of caution.

Bowser said the trip was long overdue because of the presence Salvadorans have in the District.

“I made the decision early in the year, feeling and seeing the anxiety among so many of my neighbors and friends and fellow Washingtonians that this was the time to make the trip here to El Salvador,” she said.

President Donald Trump’s administration announced earlier this year it will end temporary protected status for immigrants from El Salvador in September 2019, meaning thousands of Salvadorans would have to return to El Salvador.

“My hope would be that the administration would have a change of heart, quite frankly,” Bowser said.

During her visit, Bowser received the key to San Salvador from Mayor Luis Mason.

Saturday afternoon she went to the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador to pay her respects to a revered figure there: Monsignor Oscar Romero.

She had planned to visit Intipuca Sunday, a town known as the most American city in El Salvador due to the many immigrants that have left for the D.C. area.

The mayor is expected to arrive at Dulles International Airport at 2:15 p.m. She plans to return to El Salvador Monday.

The white supremacist Unite to Right rally is scheduled from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sunday, a year after the first Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which turned violent and led to the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer when a man drove into a crowd. 

Unite the Right is expected to be outnumbered by the several planned counterprotests.