“I like to take care of things,” said 49-year-old Miriam Gómez, stooping to the floor and delicately coaxing a kitten into her cupped hands. Its orange fur burned in a shaft of light as she raised it to the sky. “I like to take care of people too.” It is an instinct that never deserted her, even when she was imprisoned.
Recalling the six months she spent in El Salvador’s Apanteos Penitentiary Centre, Miriam described sharing food with starving inmates, recycling water to clean a toilet shared by 100 people, and using toothpaste, soap and sanitary pads to treat the skin infections of her fellow prisoners.
A former police officer of 25 years, Miriam is one of over 88,000 people who have been detained under President Nayib Bukele’s state of exception — a legal measure that allows the administration to suspend constitutional rights in response to extraordinary circumstances.
Initially a reaction to rampant gang violence, government officials have credited Bukele’s policies with a dramatic reduction in violent crime. However, the state of exception has been widely criticized by international organizations for facilitating a pattern of arbitrary detentions and human rights violations since its adoption in March 2022.
“They didn’t tell us why they were arresting us,” Miriam told New Lines, “but they took us to the station anyway.”
Up until her arrest on Nov. 10, 2022, Miriam was secretary of the board of directors for La Tiendona — San Salvador’s main wholesale market. The group’s attempts to push for transparency in the collection of parking and vendor fees brought them into conflict with municipal employees who, according to Miriam, had been taking advantage of cash payments to extort and embezzle money. She claims that these employees subsequently paid officers to arrest and fabricate charges against her, along with three of her colleagues.
As night fell, she found herself detained in a holding facility. “They made us strip,” she recalled, describing how she was placed in a cell with members of the notorious gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18 — despite being a known police officer. She remained there for nine days before being sent to Apanteos. But this was only the beginning of her ordeal.
With difficulty, she described the events of the ensuing six months. She lowered her cupped hands back to the ground, the kitten crawling reluctantly onto a concrete floor littered with children’s toys and piles of laundry.
“They tortured me,” she said, taking a seat on a nearby couch. “From the very beginning, they began hanging me from the bars. They beat me, sprayed me with pepper spray, and denied me my medication. They did everything possible to harm me.”
Miriam said that she and other inmates were repeatedly abused by guards in Apanteos. “They would beat us with batons — several times they hit me here, on the knees. Just because they felt like it.”
Much of her time in prison was spent sharing a single mattress with two other women. “We had to stay on the mattress all day long — day and night,” she said. “We couldn’t move. And if we wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to ask permission.”
She described being repeatedly denied her regular daily medications, Quetiapine and Citalopram, which she had been prescribed for a mental health condition. She said that this medication was only given to her around 15 times in the six months that she was imprisoned.
She also reported occasions where she was denied meals and said that the amount of water distributed to inmates was inadequate. The 20 toilets shared by 2,000 women were operated with a “bucket-flush” system — whereby inmates would be expected to flush by pouring water into the toilet bowl. Miriam explained that the prison failed to provide adequate water, so they used water recycled from the laundry to flush. The unsanitary conditions led to an environment in which skin conditions such as herpes, scabies and boils were commonplace.
Over time, Miriam got to know her fellow inmates, many of whom also claimed to have been arrested arbitrarily. “I gradually came to realize that the police were making the arrests because many of the women had refused to have sexual contact with them,” Miriam said.
For some of these women, this abuse did not end in prison. Miriam said that she witnessed unwilling inmates being taken away to be assaulted by guards. “I’d ask, ‘What happened?’ and they’d say, ‘Those sons of bitches want to chimar [have sex with] me,’” she recalled. She indicated that other women would go more quietly — in exchange for soap, cereal or toilet paper.
The final six weeks of Miriam’s detention were spent in the “punishment zone,” an isolated cell made of corrugated metal — unbearably hot during the day and freezing at night. Here, Miriam said, she was attacked with pepper spray. “I felt as if I were on fire, like being wrapped in flames,” she remembered. “I spent three or four days crying.”
After being notified in January of 2023 that she was being processed for release, Miriam’s ordeal finally came to an end that year on April 27.
“It was the first time I saw the sun again,” she said, rising from her seat. She moved across the room to a small stove in the corner, lighting the gas with one hand and grabbing a pot of black coffee with another.
Two years later, the experience has left her financially ruined and emotionally scarred, unable to find steady work since her release. “There are things that you just don’t get over,” she said.
Her three colleagues remain imprisoned to this day, joining thousands who are detained under El Salvador’s state of exception. Meanwhile, reports of mistreatment and inhumane conditions remain commonplace — in a report published in September, the Salvadoran nongovernmental organization Humanitarian Legal Aid for El Salvador (Socorro Juridico Humanitario Para El Salvador) counted a total of 447 deaths in custody under the state of exception.
El Salvador’s gang crackdown has its roots in a bloody history. Once one of Latin America’s most violent nations, its streets were dominated for years by criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18. These groups, along with many of those who fought against them, found notoriety in brutal violence. Deaths peaked in 2015, when El Salvador became the Western Hemisphere’s most violent nation, with 103 homicides per 100,000 people. Although the violence gradually declined in the following years, an alleged breakdown of government negotiations with criminal groups saw 87 people murdered by gangs between March 25 and 27, 2022.
This historic 72-hour killing spree triggered the Legislative Assembly to adopt a state of exception, which was implemented on March 27, 2022. Initially intended as a temporary 30-day measure, Bukele’s emergency powers were meant to give the state more ammunition in its fight against gang violence in the country. However, over three years later, El Salvador remains under the same state of exception.
This means that several constitutional rights have been suspended, including the right to be informed of the reason for arrest, privacy of communications, freedom of assembly and the right to appear before a judge within 72 hours of arrest.
While the state says that these measures have slashed violent crime — 2024 saw only 114 homicides, a record low — human rights organizations have linked Bukele’s state of exception to a startling democratic backslide. The approval of indefinite presidential reelection this July capped a presidency marked by the intimidation of lawmakers, the persecution of journalists and the criminalization of human rights defenders. El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with 1.7% of its population imprisoned according to World Prison Brief — more than double the next highest nation, Cuba, with 0.8% imprisonment (the U.S. occupies the fifth place globally).
Yet Bukele’s draconian tactics have won him an array of international admirers — including Donald Trump, who has found a kindred spirit in the Salvadoran leader. Their alliance goes beyond ideology; this year, the U.S deported over 250 Venezuelans and 20 Salvadorans to CECOT, El Salvador’s 40,000-capacity mega prison.
Essentially a prison-for-hire, CECOT’s slick promotional imagery gleams with iron-grey concrete floors, cold floodlights and masked guards weaving through crowds of handcuffed prisoners, shaved heads bowed to the floor. “He’s taking care of a lot of problems,” Trump said.
But the fallout from Bukele’s gang crackdown extends far beyond the high walls of CECOT.
As the morning dawned over La Esperanza prison in San Salvador, a small crowd had already begun to take shape in the gathering light. The new sun peered over a prison fence that bristled with barbed wire, light glinting from clear plastic bags carried by the figures assembled at the entrance.
These were the relatives of the detained — they came to deliver supply packages containing food, clothing, hygiene products and other goods that are distributed to their family members in La Esperanza. Many here claimed that their relatives have been detained for years without trial. Contact of any kind with prisoners is totally prohibited.
In a small apartment opposite the prison, some women make their living selling supply packages to the inmates’ relatives. Bars of soap, soup cans and packets of toilet paper were arranged on a small table in the centre of the room.
“Most of the people who come here have very little money,” said one vendor, who wished to remain anonymous. “There are people who can only bring $20.” Many supply packages cost in excess of $100.
“People come with their backpacks, with their sons’ clothes and shoes, hoping that today will be the day they release them,” she continued. “But they never do.”
The father of her five young children has himself been detained in La Esperanza for the past two years. Like many who buy her products, she said that he is innocent and claimed that he has still not been given a trial.
Across the room, a woman — who requested anonymity for this interview — waited for her supply package to be prepared. From her hand dangled a thin slip of paper. On it, the name of her nephew was written in a rough scrawl. Unable to contact him since his detention five months ago, this battered scrap of paper was her only proof that he was still alive.
“He was like a son to me,” she said. “If I didn’t come to deliver a supply package, it would be as if he were dead.”
Her young daughter leaned against her shoulder as she talked. They had left their home in the west of the country at around 3:30 a.m. to arrive at the prison — a journey that costs around $30 each way and lasts 10 hours in total.
The wave of arrests across El Salvador has left a trail of devastated families in its wake. In interviews, many have insisted on their relatives’ innocence, describing young people with careers and aspirations, and a community of people willing to vouch for them. But unable to contact their loved ones and facing silence from the authorities, all they can do is wait for news.
“In the days after his arrest, I stopped eating,” said María Josefina Elias, 63, whose 32-year-old son René Eduardo has been detained since June 2023. “I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night wondering how he was, what they might be doing to him.” Like many detained under the state of exception, her son has been accused of belonging to an unlawful association (essentially, being a gang member).
As she talked, her five dogs snapped excitedly at her ankles. From another room, her daughter’s young child was crying faintly. She has never met her uncle. Though he cannot receive them, María writes messages to her son every day. She is now a working member of the Salvadoran volunteer organization Movement for the Victims of the State of Exception (MOVIR), where she helps to advocate for the rights of the detained.
“I’m going to be strong,” she said. “I’m not going to cry. I’m going to stand up and show my face wherever I have to, because what they’re doing isn’t right.”
But those attempting to advocate for their detained relatives have found themselves faced with a legal brick wall.
“I’ve fought so hard to help my son, but unfortunately we’re in legal limbo,” said Maribel Amaya, 47, whose son, Jorge Luis, has been detained since May 2022. At the time of his arrest, Jorge Luis was walking to the college where he was studying English. He was 18 years old; this January, he will turn 22.
Upon her son’s arrest, Amaya was told he had been moved to a prison named Izalco. Unable to obtain information, she slept on the street outside the prison complex for 22 days — waiting for news of her son. “When the rain came, I’d put on my sandals, my jacket and an umbrella,” she said. “When the rain stopped, I’d dry my feet, put my shoes back on — and that’s how I spent 22 days.”
On the 23rd day, the prison finally began to release information. But Amaya was forced to wait for 25 hours in a queue with other families, unable to eat or go to the bathroom for fear of losing her place in line. Eventually, she was told that Jorge Luis had been transferred to La Esperanza, where he has now been for over three years.
“I can prove that my son is innocent, that he’s a hardworking young man. He had goals and dreams that he was fighting for,” Amaya told New Lines. “Here, when the authorities say you’re a gang member, that’s all that matters. Nothing else counts.”
Amaya believes that her son was arrested in order to fulfill an arrest quota. Indeed, police whistleblowers have previously reported being punished for not fulfilling minimum arrest quotas, leading to the fabrication of evidence and the arrest of innocent people.
The massive caseload generated by Bukele’s emergency measures led to the introduction of “mass trials” in July 2023. Under this model, defendants can be grouped together by neighborhood or alleged gang affiliation. Activists claim that this means individual cases often go unheard, and innocent civilians are condemned alongside gang members.
Samuel Ramírez, founder of MOVIR, believes that Bukele’s administration has a commercial interest in keeping innocent people detained.
“There are thousands of people who’ve been arrested under the state of exception who haven’t been convicted because no crime has been found — yet they’re being forced to work,” he said. “It’s a business for the state.”
In the streets of San Salvador’s historic centre, men clad in bright yellow T-shirts darted between humming power tools and half-mixed cement. These were prisoners working under Bukele’s Cero Ocio (“Zero Leisure”) scheme. Heavily promoted since 2020, the scheme aims to put convicted prisoners to work on state construction projects.
However, human rights advocates state that innocent civilians, detained under emergency measures, are also being exploited under the scheme’s banner. Samuel Ramírez pointed to one example from October of this year, when a 28-year-old man detained under the state of exception was killed by electric shock while working on a Cero Ocio project.
“They’re being forced to work,” Amaya said. “What’s that called? It’s called slavery.”
As detentions continue to surge across El Salvador, Bukele’s administration has taken aim at the organizations that advocate for those most at risk. In May 2025, the Foreign Agents Law imposed a 30% tax on NGOs in receipt of international funding. Coinciding with the detention of government critics such as lawyer Ruth Lopez and the nationwide exodus of human rights defenders, Bukele’s anti-NGO legislation has left remaining activists concerned for their safety.
“There’s truly been a wave of persecution,” Ramírez said. “Many people have told me that I should be out of the country by now.” Ramírez would not be the first from MOVIR to be forced from El Salvador; earlier this year, his colleague Alfredo Mejía left the country after the police came to his home. “I’ve received information from colleagues in the police who’ve said: ‘They’re investigating you. They’re framing a case against you. Be very careful,’” Ramírez told New Lines.
President Bukele’s many advocates argue that his hard-line tactics have led to a dramatic decline in El Salvador’s once sky-high crime rate. The overall homicide rate has fallen by 80% since the beginning of the state of exception, according to El Salvador’s National Civil Police.
But as the pretrial period for those detained under the state of exception is extended by another two years, those caught in the wake of the president’s gang crackdown will feel that nothing is worth the price that they have paid. In spite of the risks of reprisal, many will continue to advocate for their human rights.
“I’m the only one fighting for my son,” Amaya said. “So I can’t fall apart. I have to take my pain and turn it into courage.”
On the table before her a pile of documents lay scattered: a habeas corpus, a graduation certificate, her son’s photograph. Her fingers traced the outlines of a drawing made by her young granddaughter. The loosely sketched lines of her son’s face, free and reunited with his family, smiled out at her from the image.
“I have hope that my son will be freed, because I won’t rest until I make it happen. The day they took him, I promised him that,” she said. “And I will make that promise come true.”
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