As of 2026-01. Human Rights Watch's World Report 2026 records more than 90,000 arrests since March 2022 and a prison population of about 118,000, roughly 1.9 per cent of all Salvadorans, and the emergency has been renewed monthly since.
El Salvador declared a state of exception in March 2022 after a weekend in which gangs killed dozens of people, suspending constitutional guarantees including the right to be informed of the reason for arrest and access to a lawyer. Security forces have since detained roughly 85,000 people, about 1.4 per cent of the population, largely on the basis of appearance, neighbourhood and anonymous tips rather than individualised evidence, and mass hearings have been conducted online with hundreds of defendants at a time. Human Rights Watch documented torture and severe beatings during arrest and detention, extreme overcrowding requiring detainees to sleep standing or on floors, immersion in ice water for up to two hours, denial of medication, and 66 cases of children subjected to torture and abusive conditions. Salvadoran human rights organisations record more than 350 deaths in state custody since March 2022, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has documented torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment in detention centres. The government credits the policy with an over-80 per cent fall in homicides and it retains broad domestic support; the CECOT mega-prison at Tecoluca, designed for 20,000 and later expanded toward 40,000, has become the emblem of the policy and in 2025 received men deported from the United States. The measure has been renewed by the legislature every month since it began.
The Salvadoran government suspended constitutional guarantees and detained tens of thousands of people without individualised charge in an anti-gang campaign
El Salvador's 2024 census counted 6,029,976 residents, below earlier projections of about 6.3 million; roughly two-thirds are adults, the group from which almost all detainees are drawn.
More than 350 people have died in state custody since March 2022 according to Salvadoran human rights organisations, a figure cited by both WOLA and Human Rights Watch. No upper bound is given because the Salvadoran government does not publish deaths in custody, excludes them from official homicide statistics and denies human rights monitors and press access to most detention facilities, so the count rests entirely on family reports and civil-society casework and is treated by both organisations as a minimum.
Both forms are documented by Human Rights Watch and by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has recorded torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment in Salvadoran detention centres under the state of exception.
El Salvador