California Congresswoman Says She Sleeps with a Gun Nearby After Pushing Back on El Salvador’s President

Will Lester/MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images Rep. Norma Torres

A California lawmaker says she now sleeps with a gun nearby after receiving "hateful messages" online following a string of tense Twitter exchanges with El Salvador's president, of whom she has been sharply critical.

Democratic Rep. Norma Torres recently opened up to The Los Angeles Times about her harrowing journey to the U.S. as a young child from Guatemala and how Central America's tumult still follows her as an adult — even into sleep.

Torres, 56, is the only member of Congress born in Central America. She immigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was 5 years old.

She told the Times in a new profile that she isn't far from a firearm each night out of fear that allies of El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele might become violent toward her.

"Her social media accounts are inundated with hateful messages and images," according to Times. "And so she sleeps with her gun nearby."

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Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Rep. Norma Torres

Torres, who represents California's 35th Congressional District, has sparred on social media with Bukele, El Salvador's widely popular 39-year-old leader, over the treatment of citizens who flee his country and become migrants.

The public back-and-forth between the two has led to an increase in angry and threatening social media messages directed toward Torres.

Some of the messages, reviewed by PEOPLE, come from both Bukele's supporters and from several members of the Salvadorian legislature with large followings. (Torres' office declined to comment on the record about the posts.)

The most recent data from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reports that officials have encountered more than 306,000 people migrating from the "Northern Triangle" countries in Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — since October.

After two young migrant children were dropped over a 14-foot U.S. border wall in April, Torres tweeted at Bukele that it's "a great shame for the governments of #Guatemala #Honduras #ElSalvador their compatriots deserve governments that are truly committed to fighting corruption and narco[trafficking]!"

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Bukele — who is the youngest president in Latin America and popular, according to NPR — had pointed out the two young girls were from Ecuador, not El Salvador.

"Also, this happened on the border of Mexico with the United States," Bukele responded to Torres. "What does El Salvador have to do with this?"

But that response prompted Torres to tweet again at Bukele, who is widely popular with voters in El Salvador and who styles himself as a pragmatist with a youthful appearance and hardline politics.

She criticized him as a "narcissistic dictator" more "interested in being 'cool' while people flee by the 1000s & die by the 100s."

Bukele responded by calling for El Salvadorians and other Latin Americans living in the U.S. to vote against Torres in an effort to oust her from office.

"She does not work for you, but to keep our countries underdeveloped," he wrote in Spanish.

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images El Salvador President Nayib Bukele

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Rep. Norma Torres

It was an unusual exchange between a sitting member of Congress and the leader of a foreign country.

The Times reports that U.S. officials at the State Department have become increasingly worried about Bukele's seeming authoritarian tendencies as he has taken efforts to joust with members of the media and those he views as critics.

In early 2020, The Washington Post reported that he marched into the country's legislative assembly and threatened he could "press the button" to break up the legislature after lawmakers failed to vote in favor of his budget proposal.

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Torres told the Times she is worried there's not enough being done in Central American countries to change the root causes for migration, such as poor economic living conditions or political corruption.

"All the 'Northern Triangle' countries are in the same predicament: You have strongmen, and I can't see a difference between the former president and the new one. It's the past repeating itself in each country," Torres told the newspaper.

She said migration issues, especially when they involve young children at the border, are "very, very personal" to her.

She spoke in detail about escaping violence during the Guatemalan Civil War, which killed an estimated 200,000 people from 1960 until it ended in 1996. At one point, she said, her mother held her up in the windshield in order to prevent gunmen from firing into the family's car.

Now, Torres told the Times, when she sees young children at the border such as the two girls that sparked her fiery back-and-forth with Bukele the images hit close to home.

"They look like me, it's like my younger self," Torres said. "It's my grandson, it could be my children. It becomes very, very personal."