WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats say Tunisian President Kais Saied’s inflammatory rhetoric against migrants and intensified crackdown on his perceived critics raises “serious concerns” about the US relationship with Tunisia. 

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, 20 House Democrats led by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) expressed alarm over what they described as “a stark acceleration in Tunisia’s autocratic consolidation.”

Under Saeid’s watch, Tunisian authorities have carried out a wave of politically motivated arrests since mid-February that have targeted activists, business leaders, journalists and prominent opposition figures. 

The campaign of arrests is among the largest since July 2021, when Saied froze the parliament, sacked his prime minister and assumed broad executive powers in a dramatic power grab that his critics labeled a coup. He later pushed through a new constitution that critics say dismantled hard-won democratic gains in Tunisia, once considered the Arab Spring’s sole success story.