El Salvador's exception regime will complete three years in 2025 and 90,000 detainees

San Salvador.- El Salvador will end 2025 under a state of exception, implemented since 2022 to combat gangs, following the approval this Tuesday of the 45th extension of the measure that suspends constitutional guarantees until December 31st of this year. The extension of the measure, in force since March 2022 and through which more than 90,000 people accused of belonging to gangs have been arrested, was approved by the Legislative Assembly with the votes of 57 deputies out of 60 from the ruling party Nuevas Ideas (NI) and its allies. The state of exception, which various analysts pointed out was also used to try to silence critical voices, was justified by "the still existing terrorist groups that, if their actions are not completely eradicated, would allow a setback to the achievements obtained", according to the legislative decree. Furthermore, it was pointed out that "active remnants of these groups persist in the territory, support networks, and criminal practices for their subsistence and financing that have not been completely dismantled".

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This extension implies that the right to defense of detainees, the inviolability of telecommunications, and the maximum administrative detention of three days, which increases to fifteen, will remain suspended for thirty more days. The exception regime has been extended in this 2025 despite multiple calls for its repeal, as the measure is accused of violating human rights, according to various non-governmental organizations. The extension of the exception regime occurs despite the fact that the government of President Nayib Bukele claims to have operationally dismantled the gangs. The state of exception was approved after the murder of more than eighty people in a weekend at the end of March 2022, which journalistic investigations indicate was due to the breaking of a pact between the Government and criminal gangs. This measure has become the government's only bet against gangs, which also earned President Bukele his immediate re-election for a second term, despite the constitutional prohibition, and which maintains high approval among Salvadorans. Various humanitarian organizations have received more than 6,400 reports of human rights violations, mainly for arbitrary detentions and torture, and report more than four hundred deaths of detainees in state custody, the majority with signs of violence, as they have denounced.