When President Nayib Bukele announced a sweeping “state of exception” in El Salvador in March 2022, he promised an end to the country’s long-standing nightmare: the grip of brutal street gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18.

His bold crackdown, backed by iron-fisted rhetoric and slick social media campaigns, won him global headlines and soaring domestic approval. Three years later, the country boasts one of the lowest homicide rates in the hemisphere. On paper, Bukele’s security strategy appears a resounding success.

But beneath the surface of order and victory lies a much darker and increasingly undeniable reality: El Salvador’s new era of security has been built on mass incarceration, systemic corruption, and egregious human rights violations.

A new report by Cristosal, a respected Salvadoran human rights organization, exposes what it calls “the criminality of an autocratic state.” Drawing from hundreds of interviews, verified testimonies, forensic evidence, and internal government data, the report depicts a justice system not restored, but repurposed—as a machine of repression and profit.

While Bukele enjoys high popularity in El Salvador, with approval rates nearing 75% in some polls, the Cristosal report reflects existing condemnation from numerous human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. These groups denounce extensive human rights abuses and the erosion of the country’s democratic system.

Most recently, conditions inside El Salvador’s prisons have drawn scrutiny from abroad, including the United States. Human rights organizations sounded alarms earlier this year after arrangements surfaced showing the Trump administration coordinated with Bukele’s government to house deported migrants at the country’s new maximum-security facility, the CECOT (Terrorism Confinement Center).

In March 2025, the U.S. deported 238 Venezuelan migrants and 23 alleged MS-13 members to CECOT. By the end of that month, an additional 17 alleged gang members had been deported under the Alien Enemies Act, despite a federal court order temporarily halting the removals. Reports from April 2025 indicated the administration planned to send more migrants with criminal records to the same prison after the Supreme Court upheld the continued use of the Alien Enemies Act — so long as detainees had the opportunity to challenge their expulsions. There is no conclusive public evidence, however, that deportations to CECOT continued beyond July 2025.

The World’s Highest Incarceration Rate

Since the state of exception was enacted — and since extended more than 39 times — nearly 90,000 people have been detained. That’s about 1 in every 50 adults. Detainees can be held indefinitely without charges, often based on vague suspicion, anonymous tips, or looks alone. Entire neighborhoods, long stigmatized as “gang zones,” have become targets of military-style raids.

And El Salvador not only has the highest incarceration rate of the world, but it also has a staggering number of deaths inside its prisons. Cristosal has verified at least 427 deaths in state custody since the crackdown began; dozens more cases remain under investigation.

This environment of mass detentions, human rights violations and secrecy has created a lucrative side business for corrupt official who prey on family members of the imprisoned. According to the Cristosal report, government officials now operates with criminal logic, charging desperate relatives hefty bribes in exchange for access to information, visits, or the improvements in detention conditions.

The prison system, far from serving as a guarantor of dignity and successful reintegration, has become a space where power is used as a mechanism of abuse and extortion, said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal.

“These dynamics of mass detention, intentional denial of basic needs of people in prisons, and the secrecy of the prisons themselves are creating conditions that are permissive for corruption,” Bullock said in an interview.

“The desperation of the families to keep their people alive, the desperation of the families to see them and have proof of life” has become an opportunity for institutionalized extortion and the cases brought to life in the report are just “one small example of how the criminality of the gangs has been supplanted through the criminality of an autocratic state,” he said.

The great majority of detainees are held without having been found guilty in a court of law. For many, it is not about what they’ve done, but where they live or how they look, Bullock said. These are arbitrary arrests, often without evidence or due process.

The result is that tens of thousands, many of them first-time detainees with no proven gang ties, have disappeared into a system where access to justice—and even survival—is often for sale.

For Salvadorans and deportees alike, what awaits inside these prisons has alarmed advocates.

Mega-Prisons

El Salvador’s sprawling new mega-prisons, including the infamous CECOT, are at the heart of this apparatus. Built to house tens of thousands, these facilities are described by the government as models of modern penology. Yet firsthand accounts from former inmates and international observers tell a radically different story.

Prisoners are regularly denied food, medicine, and even clothing. Beatings by guards are routine. Solitary confinement stretches into months or years. According to Cristosal, many of those that died under custody since the crackdown began lost their lives due to untreated illnesses, such as kidney failure caused by dehydration, or internal injuries from beatings. Others are suspected of having died due to outright torture.

“The information that we’ve gathered indicate that it is the guards who regularly use practices of torture. In some prisons, there’s beatings that are inductions to the prisons,” Bullock said. “Those are common when prisoners are brought into the prisons. In some cases, they’re forced to deal on gravel courtyards under the sun for hours. And if they pass out or complain, they’re subjected to physical beatings. We have multiple testimonies of prisoners who intercede on behalf of other prisoners who are ill, and the consequences of doing this is more beatings. So those are pretty systematic patterns.”

Corruption as Policy

Abuse, however, is only part of the story. What Cristosal’s report reveals most chillingly is the institutionalization of corruption at nearly every level of the prison system.

In many facilities, visits are not a right—they’re a transaction. Families are asked to “donate” office supplies, construction materials, or medicine just to see their loved ones for 20 minutes. In one documented case, a mother paid $4,000 — twice — just to see her husband in Mariona prison. Another woman, “Maura,” raising her grandchildren alone after all three of her sons were arrested, said she was asked to pay $2,000 for a single visit, the report said.

Guards and officials often act as brokers in this underground economy. Inmates write “official” letters requesting goods; families have 72 hours to deliver, or the visit is canceled. In many cases, packages sent by loved ones vanish before reaching prisoners, the report said.

“This sort of mass violation of rights has given place to a permissive environment in which officials of the prison system take advantage of the prisoners’ families to extort them, to extract gifts or donations from them, serving as bribe payments,” Bullock said.

Lawyers have joined the grift too. Some charge families up to $7,000 for promises of early release, or for transfers to “safer” prison sectors. Whether those promises are ever fulfilled often

A Tool of Repression Against Dissent

Not even human rights defenders are safe.

In May, Ruth López, a prominent lawyer with Cristosal who had filed multiple corruption complaints against Bukele’s administration, was arrested in a midnight raid. She was held for 15 days without charges, disappeared for 40 hours, and is now being prosecuted in a secret trial — denied access to a public hearing, legal counsel, and contact with family.

She’s not alone. Four other activists were detained the same week. Amid escalating threats, Cristosal has shut down its San Salvador office and relocated operations to Guatemala. One of the authors of their most recent prison abuse report is currently imprisoned.

Bukele has repeatedly portrayed detainees as terrorists, unworthy of human rights or legal protections. In national broadcasts, he’s boasted of feeding prisoners meager rations and denying them sunlight or medical attention.

Such rhetoric has fostered a climate where cruelty is normalized. Guards tell inmates they’ll “never leave alive.” Families are forced to choose between paying extortion fees or losing contact forever. And any public objection is painted as siding with criminals.

Despite mounting criticism, Bukele remains extraordinarily popular. His government routinely trumpets declining crime rates as evidence that his model works. The streets, once controlled by gangs, are quieter. Businesses report fewer extortion demands. Many Salvadorans say they finally feel safe.

But at an unacceptably high cost, says Bullock.

“People are being arrested and sent to years of incarceration because police consider them to seem nervous, using nervousness as an indicator of guilt. People are being arrested because of anonymous tips. People are being arrested because of what they wear, what they look like and where they live” he said. “People are not being arrested because of previous investigations or substantial amounts of evidence proving that they’ve ever committed a crime. And that means implicitly that thousands, tens of thousands of innocent people are imprisoned right now in El Salvador.”

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