The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced this Tuesday the existence of a government commission evaluating the possible conditional release of nearly half of the more than 92,000 people detained under the state of emergency.
The announcement came just hours after a phone conversation between Bukele and the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, during which they discussed how to combat "malignant foreign influence" in the region, the security of ports and critical infrastructure, and coordination at the United Nations, as confirmed by the State Department.
According to a study by El País, the decision of the Salvadoran president represents a shift that contrasts with four years of official rhetoric 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 that same year, the U.S. transferred to the Counter-Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) 238 suspected 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's Office, in apparent contradiction to the Salvadoran Constitution.
The official clarified 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 the detainees, which would amount to around 46,000 people.
"We are evaluating the cases to offer early release to a large number of inmates who are indeed guilty, who do deserve to be in prison, but given the conditions our country is facing, perhaps we can make an exception for many of them," declared the president.
The existence of the commission was revealed in April 2026 by Ibrahim Bukele, the president's brother and a figure with no official position but notable de facto power, who announced on social media that the body reviews "one by one" the cases of those in custody. According to Ibrahim, the commission includes judges, prosecutors, Executive branch personnel, and the First Lady, Gabriela de Bukele.
The announcement stands in stark contrast to the discourse Bukele maintained for over four years, during which he claimed that the "error margin" of his repressive policy was just 1% and even stated that the detainees "will never come out again."
The state of emergency was declared on March 27, 2022, following a wave of violence that resulted in 87 deaths in 72 hours, attributed to MS-13 and Barrio 18, and has been continuously extended since then. Human rights organizations have documented more than 500 deaths in state custody and thousands of arbitrary detentions during that period.
In March 2026, an international group of experts presented a report to the UN concluding that 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 started mass trials without defense guarantees in which thousands of detainees are being processed simultaneously. "They are condemning all of them," noted 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 spent more than four years in prison.
«We had a patient with metastatic cancer, with 85% of the body affected by the disease. 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, there are still cancerous cells present. Every day we catch gang members,» stated the president to defend his security policy, which has reduced El Salvador's homicide rate from 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to just 1.3 in 2025, the lowest in America.
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