The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced this Tuesday the existence of a government commission that is evaluating the possible conditional release of nearly half of the more than 92,000 individuals detained under the state of emergency.
The announcement came hours after a phone conversation between Bukele and the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in which they discussed how to combat "malign foreign influence" in the region, port security, critical infrastructure, and coordination within the United Nations, as confirmed by the State Department.
According to research by El País, the decision made by the Salvadoran president marks a shift that contrasts with four years of official discourse regarding anti-gang policy.
The relationship between Washington and San Salvador is close: Rubio visited El Salvador in February 2025 and praised Bukele's security model, and in March of the same year, the U.S. transferred to the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) 238 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua and leaders of MS-13.
Bukele described the commission as a "third form" of justice that operates outside the system of judges and the Attorney General of the Republic, seemingly contradicting the Salvadoran Constitution.
The president specified that the mechanism aims to benefit those who had a "minimal collaboration" with the gangs, a group that could represent "more or less 50%" of those detained, which would amount to about 46,000 individuals.
"We are evaluating cases to offer early release to a significant number of inmates who are indeed guilty and deserve to be in prison, but given the conditions in our country, we might be able to make an exception for many of them," the president stated.
The existence of the commission was revealed in April by Ibrahim Bukele, the president's brother and an individual without an official position but with notable de facto power, who posted on social media that the organization reviews "one by one" the cases of those deprived of liberty. According to Ibrahim, the commission includes judges, prosecutors, executive staff, and the first lady, Gabriela de Bukele.
The announcement directly contradicts the narrative Bukele maintained for over four years, in which he claimed that the "margin of error" of his repressive policy was only 1% and went so far as to assert that the detainees "will never come out again."
The state of emergency was declared on March 27, 2022, following a wave of violence that left 87 dead in 72 hours, attributed to MS-13 and Barrio 18, and has been continuously extended since then. Human rights organizations have documented over 500 deaths in state custody and thousands of arbitrary detentions during this period.
In March of last year, an international group of experts presented a report to the UN that concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity are being committed in El Salvador, including torture, enforced disappearances, and sexual violence.
Since last January, Salvadoran courts have begun mass trials without defense guarantees in which thousands of detainees are being processed simultaneously. "They are condemning them all," said one of the lawyers consulted by El País.
Bukele did not specify a timeline for the evaluation of the cases, while thousands of detainees have already been in prison for over four years.
«We had a patient with metastatic cancer, with 85% of the body affected by the cancer. And we applied chemotherapy. It worked. Right now, the cancer is in remission. There are no homicides, assaults, or robberies. The cancer is not affecting the body. But at the same time, cancerous cells still exist. Every day we catch gang members,» the president stated to defend his security policy, which reduced El Salvador's homicide rate from 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to just 1.3 in 2025, the lowest in the Americas.
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