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A decade ago, El Salvador held the grim distinction of being the world’s most violent nation. The government launched an all-out offensive against street and prison gangs, and the homicide rate plummeted by a factor of fifty. One in every seventy-seven citizens was imprisoned — many without ever facing trial, and with virtually no prospect of freedom.
In February 2025, Donald Trump’s administration reached an agreement with El Salvador to transfer migrants and offenders to that country, regardless of their nationality — including American citizens. Though El Salvador once topped global murder statistics in the mid-2000s, its authorities managed over a decade to slash that figure dramatically, partly through ruthless policies: sweeping raids, detention without due process, and arrests based on little more than a person’s appearance.
The deep roots of the country’s crime crisis stretch back to a civil war that raged from 1979 to 1992. That conflict, which claimed over 75,000 lives, forced more than a million Salvadorans to flee their homeland. A large portion of them settled in Los Angeles — a city already struggling with violent crime, where impoverished neighborhoods were carved up by ethnic gangs dominated largely by Mexican and African American members.
To defend themselves from attacks, Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles banded together and founded their own gang: Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13. It expanded rapidly, soon plunging into brutal territorial and drug-trafficking wars with rival organizations.
Around the same time, Salvadorans began joining Barrio 18 — a gang originally formed in the 1970s as an exclusively Mexican outfit, which later opened its ranks to immigrants from across Central America. MS-13 and Barrio 18 became ferocious enemies on the streets of Los Angeles.
When the civil war ended and peace returned to El Salvador, the United States began sending Salvadorans home, prioritizing the deportation of those with criminal records. This meant that large numbers of MS-13 and Barrio 18 members were shipped back to a shattered country — one with a feeble government, an ineffective police force, bleak economic prospects, and an abundance of war-era firearms.
Hardened gang veterans from Los Angeles, experienced in street warfare against both rivals and law enforcement, rapidly seized control. Their ranks swelled through aggressive recruitment that targeted children as young as ten.
By the early 2000s, each of the two main gangs counted roughly 10,000 active members — together comprising around one percent of El Salvador’s entire population. Tens of thousands more civilians served as support networks without formally joining. The gangs clashed over resources and turf with a savagery that shocked even by the standards of Mexican cartels or neighboring criminal organizations.
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, successive Salvadoran governments tried various approaches to the gang problem. Mass arrests and stiffer penalties for gang affiliation were the preferred tools — but the gangs consistently retaliated by escalating street violence. Murder rates never dipped below 50 to 60 per 100,000 residents during that period.
At times, the government turned to negotiation. In 2012, with the Catholic Church brokering talks, the authorities struck an informal ceasefire with MS-13 and Barrio 18: gang leaders in prison would be granted better conditions and money would flow to impoverished communities, while the gangs pledged to halt the killings.
Violence did fall — homicides dropped by two to three times — but the gangs exploited the government’s reduced pressure to deepen their grip on society. By 2014, amid international criticism and growing domestic controversy, the truce collapsed. MS-13 and Barrio 18 responded with an explosion of violence, and in 2015 the murder rate soared to 107.6 per 100,000 — the highest of any country on earth.
Nayib Bukele assumed the presidency in 2019 and initially pursued a similar backroom approach, holding covert talks with both gangs and again offering improved prison conditions in exchange for reduced bloodshed.
But as public criticism of these secret dealings mounted, Bukele abruptly reversed course — particularly after a horrific weekend in March 2022 when 87 people were killed in just three days. The government declared a state of emergency — originally for one month, though it has since been renewed over thirty times — and unleashed a crackdown of unprecedented ferocity, dwarfing anything attempted before. By early 2023, more than 60,000 people had been detained.
Under the state of emergency, suspects could be held for fifteen days without trial on minimal or nonexistent grounds, and their rights to legal representation and private communications were curtailed.
In August 2022, Bukele announced the construction of a massive new prison capable of holding 40,000 inmates. It was completed in under six months. The facility, officially named the Terrorist Detention Centre (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT), became the emblem of Bukele’s anti-gang war — a structure unlike anything previously built, in El Salvador or anywhere else. The authorities repeatedly declared that escape was impossible and that no prisoner sent there would ever walk free: in Bukele’s vision, everyone inside would die behind its walls.
CECOT sits in a thinly populated mountainous region at the center of the country. The complex spans 23 hectares, with a further 140 hectares of surrounding land kept under constant watch. It is rectangular, enclosed by concrete walls eleven meters high, topped with razor wire and motion sensors. At its opening, eight cell hangars stood within their own internal walls.
Originally built for 20,000 prisoners, the facility’s capacity was later doubled to 40,000. Precise inmate numbers are now withheld — the last official figure, released in June 2024, was 14,532. By April 2025, the prison director said the population was drawing close to maximum capacity.
Cells hold up to 150 prisoners in bunk beds stacked four high. Each cell contains two sinks and two floor-level latrines. In a deliberate policy choice, members of rival gangs are mixed together indiscriminately. All inmates wear identical white shorts and shirts; their heads are shaved every five days.
Prisoners spend twenty-three and a half hours each day locked in their cells, where they may only stand or sit on their bunks. Lights burn continuously around the clock, and cameras record every movement without pause. For thirty minutes daily, inmates are escorted to a shared corridor where they exercise on command or hear a priest’s sermon. They never leave the hangar — Bukele has made a point of stating that the criminals will never see sunlight.
Each prisoner is issued two copies of the Bible; no other possessions are permitted. Books, writing materials, and paper are all forbidden. Speaking is allowed, but any attempt to establish a power hierarchy or communicate between cell blocks brings punishment.
Three daily meals consist of rice, pasta, or beans, accompanied by water and tortillas. Meat is never served — a conscious decision by the authorities to prevent any suggestion that criminals enjoy better food than ordinary working citizens. Meals are served in plastic containers and eaten with bare hands, since utensils are banned.
Legal consultations take place in dedicated rooms within the complex, and court hearings are conducted by video link. Contact with the outside world is severely restricted. Correspondence rights exist on paper, but permissions are rarely granted in practice; all letters undergo strict censorship and many never reach their recipients. Family visits are permitted only in exceptional circumstances — a serious or terminal illness, for instance — justified officially by the need to prevent gang leaders from passing instructions to their networks outside.
Interaction between guards and prisoners is kept to an absolute minimum. Cell doors open only from a remote command post housed in a separate building. The prison is staffed by hundreds of guards, with military and police personnel posted at the perimeter. All undergo thorough searches at the start and end of every shift.
Rule violations result in solitary confinement of up to two weeks. The isolation cells are entirely dark, lit only by a tiny aperture in the ceiling. Each contains a concrete sink, a toilet, and a concrete sleeping slab. Food is pushed through a slot in the door. Collective punishment is also practiced: a single infraction by one prisoner can result in reduced food rations for the entire cell.
In total, over the course of three years, more than 85,000 people have been arrested as part of the gang crackdown — equivalent to 1.3 percent of El Salvador’s population. The overwhelming majority of those arrests came in the first months of the state of emergency, before CECOT even opened.
Human rights organizations report that in many cases detention is based on anonymous tips or physical appearance alone, and that in poorer areas police operate effectively under arrest quotas set by senior officers. Once arrested, innocent people face enormous obstacles to securing their release.
Of the 85,000 detained, approximately 8,000 had been freed by the end of 2024 — primarily individuals who, upon further review, showed no tangible signs of gang membership such as tattoos or prior convictions. In practice, the system operates on a presumption of guilt. Human rights defenders also document systematic torture in custody; since the state of emergency was declared, more than 300 people have died in detention, the majority under violent circumstances.
As for CECOT itself, not a single person has officially been released since it opened — exactly as the authorities promised. The criteria for transfer there remain deeply opaque, determined by the Ministry of Justice and typically without a separate court order. Most of those sent there have been identified as active MS-13 or Barrio 18 members, but prisoners can also end up in CECOT for disciplinary violations in another facility or simply as part of a government show of force.
In 2024, the BBC documented the case of José Duval Mata, a truck driver seized during a raid in 2022. His trial, bundled together with 350 other defendants, lasted only minutes. He received a six-month sentence with the possibility of indefinite extension.
Several months later, his case was revisited and a judge found him not guilty, ordering his immediate release — but he was rearrested at the prison exit. A year after that, a second judge issued another release order, which was likewise never carried out. Mata subsequently found himself transferred to CECOT under circumstances that remain unexplained.
A BBC journalist personally raised Mata’s case with President Bukele during an interview, and subsequently sent the full case file to his office at their request, following up repeatedly with the vice president. Despite two separate acquittals, Mata was never freed. His current fate — whether he is even alive — remains unknown.
Over a decade, El Salvador has transformed itself from the country with the highest murder rate on earth to one of its safest. By the end of 2024, the homicide rate stood at just 1.9 per 100,000 people.
That said, the downward trend predated Bukele’s campaign. From the catastrophic peak of 107.6 murders per 100,000 in 2015, the rate had already fallen to 38.5 by the time Bukele took office in 2019, and had further declined to 17.3 — already below the regional average — before the state of emergency was even declared in 2022.
Multiple factors drove that earlier decline, including policing strategies from previous administrations, informal local agreements with gangs, and community-led efforts to steer children and young people away from criminal life. Critics contend that Bukele’s extraordinary measures simply took credit for a positive trajectory that was already well underway.
Nevertheless, most Salvadorans attribute their newfound security to Bukele and appear prepared to accept curtailed rights, limited freedoms, and the ever-present risk of arbitrary arrest as an acceptable price. In February 2024, Bukele was re-elected with 85 percent of the vote, and his party captured 54 of the 60 seats in parliament.
