(Office of Mayor Muriel Bowser)

Being mayor of D.C. means attending to lots of local concerns, from schools to the state of the city’s streets. But this weekend Mayor Muriel Bowser will be cultivating the city’s links to the world with an official visit to El Salvador, the first by a sitting D.C. mayor.

Aides to the mayor say she will use the trip to promote business and cultural ties between D.C. and El Salvador, but also to send a message of support to the Salvadoran community that has long emigrated to the Washington region but is now feeling the impact of President Trump’s immigration policies.

“As the national tone has changed about immigrants and their contributions to the nation, Mayor Bowser thought it was important for us to travel to San Salvador in order to reconnect,” said John Falcicchio, her chief of staff, who is traveling with her along with other senior city officials, some members of the D.C. Council and local business owners who hail from El Salvador.

There are more than 20,000 Salvadorans in D.C. alone, and some 200,000 in the region at large.

On her three-day trip to the Central American nation, Bowser will visit the tomb of slain Archbishop Óscar Romero and sign a sister-city agreement with San Salvador. (D.C.’s other sister-cities include Beijing, Brussels, Rome, Brasilia, and Addis Ababa.) She will also take the three-hour drive to Intipucá, a small town along the country’s Pacific coast where many Salvadorans in D.C. emigrated from.

Abel Núñez, the executive director of the Central American Resource Center who came to the U.S. from El Salvador 39 years ago, says there’s a particularly symbiotic relationship between D.C. and Intipucá.

“D.C. is very different now than it was 20 years ago, and a lot of the construction and development that has happened has been through the labor of these immigrants,” he said of the town of 9,500 residents. “But at the same time these immigrants have been able to send money back to the town to really develop it over there. So it has been a win-win situation for both communities.”

Rosibel Flores came to D.C. from Intipucá in 1978, and now owns a number of businesses, including the Golden Scissors hair salon in Mt. Pleasant. She’s traveling to El Salvador as part of Bowser’s delegation, and says she is happy the mayor will be visiting her hometown.

“That’s very important for us, a mayor from this country traveling six hours to go to my town. That’s a lot for our town,” she said.

The longstanding relationship between D.C. and Intipucá is also reflected in the town’s current mayor, José Elenilson Leonzo, who emigrated to the U.S. when he was 12 and lived in the Washington region for most of his life before returning to El Salvador to run for office.

Despite those close links, the trip comes at a turbulent time for immigrants in the U.S., and as Bowser faces criticism that she’s not doing enough to protect them. Earlier this week a small group of immigrant advocates protested at the Wilson Building, where they accused Bowser of failing to respond forcefully enough to recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the city that led to the arrest of at least 12 immigrants.

But Falcicchio says that Bowser argued against President Trump’s decision to end temporary protected status for Salvadorans, put more than $1 million into grants for non-profits that provide legal services to immigrants, and has repeatedly stressed that D.C. is a city where immigrants can feel safe.

“Regardless of immigration status, if someone is a victim or witnesses a crime, we want them to come forward. If someone wants to enroll their child in school, we want them to be able to do that. And if someone is sick, we don’t want them to wait to go to the hospital, we want them to come and get the care that they need. We don’t back down from anyone who says we haven’t done enough for the immigrant community. We’re constantly looking for more ways to work with the immigrant community and show that they’re an important part of the fabric of Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Núñez says Bowser is limited in how much she can prevent ICE from operating in D.C., but that she needs to be clear and open with immigrants about what protections the city can offer.

“She increased the money for legal services, she needs to make commitments that she will continue to do that. She needs to make sure there will be transparency and be clear what it means to be a sanctuary city,” he said.

But he says that overall Bowser’s trip to El Salvador is a good opportunity for her to send a message.

“The message that she can send down to the people of El Salvador is that they have a true partner in her. That independent of who is in the White House she would protect all D.C. residents independent of their country of origin and immigration status,” he said.

“And I think this could be a great symbol, a great opportunity, simply because you have the head of state of our city going down there and saying, ‘This is important enough to me to come down.’”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.