El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced a plan to conditionally release up to half of those detained under a state of emergency. The measure targets individuals classified as gang collaborators.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has unveiled a plan that could allow the conditional early release of up to half of the people detained under a state of emergency. The emergency measure, declared in March 2022, has been used to arrest more than 90,000 people in an effort to curb violent criminal gang activity.
The plan, announced on Tuesday night, focuses on prisoners deemed "gang collaborators." According to the sources, this is a broad term that can include various individuals, such as gang lookouts and those who make extortion payments.
Bukele addressed the rationale for the potential releases in a statement. "There are many people who have indeed committed crimes, but their crime was collaborating with gangs," Bukele said. "They deserve to be in jail, but we come from a country where collaborating with gangs wasn’t so unusual, and if we were to arrest everyone who collaborated with gangs, we would have to arrest 20% of the population."
The president indicated that authorities plan to analyze cases to determine potential early release with monitoring. He did not provide specific details on the criteria for this analysis.
The state of emergency was initially imposed for 30 days following a surge in violence that left more than 60 people dead in a single day. It has been repeatedly extended since then. The measure has coincided with a dramatic decline in the country's homicide rate, which government figures show dropped from a peak of more than 100 murders per 100,000 residents in 2015 to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025.
However, the government has narrowed the definition of homicide to exclude killings by police, murders in prisons, and bodies found in unmarked graves. The emergency declaration has also suspended or restricted certain constitutional protections, including the right to be informed of the reasons for detention, the right to access legal counsel, and the right to visitation.
Human rights groups have denounced the state of emergency, arguing that it has sparked widespread arbitrary arrests. These organizations have recorded more than 6,000 complaints during the emergency declaration and documented the deaths of at least 575 people in government custody.
Bertha Deleón, an exiled Salvadoran lawyer, criticized the proposed releases as insufficient. "The victims of arbitrary detentions don’t just deserve to recover their freedom, but they also deserve to be compensated for the harms caused by the State of El Salvador: the physical and mental harm that imprisonment causes, family suffering, loss of work or studies, reputational damage, among others," Deleón wrote on X.
Bukele has dismissed criticism from national and international human rights groups, suggesting they should take the side of the victims of gang violence. He defended the need to keep the state of emergency in place while indicating his goal of ending it eventually.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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