El Salvador has once again found itself at the crossroads of sweeping legal reform and mounting international controversy. On March 17, 2026, the country’s Legislative Assembly, by a lopsided vote of 59 to 1, approved a constitutional amendment that allows for life sentences—abolishing the previous 60-year cap on prison terms. This move, championed by President Nayib Bukele, has ignited fierce debate both inside El Salvador and abroad, as human rights organizations and legal experts warn of deepening authoritarianism and systemic abuses.
In the tense days leading up to the vote, President Bukele took to X (formerly Twitter) to issue a stark warning: “We’ll see who supports this reform and who dares to defend the Constitution’s continued prohibition against murderers and rapists remaining in prison.” According to reporting by The Nation, Bukele’s rhetoric was echoed in the halls of the Legislative Assembly. Justice and Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro, speaking directly to lawmakers, declared, “Now we’re going to see these organizations defending, as always, violent criminals, rapists, murderers of men and women, terrorists, and representatives of criminal organizations.”
This combative posture toward human rights groups is not new. Bukele and his administration have routinely depicted such organizations as obstacles to public safety, accusing them of siding with criminals. Just days before the constitutional amendment passed, Bukele claimed on X that “These ‘human rights’ organizations… are demanding that the State of El Salvador release 100% of the gang members captured since the beginning of the State of Emergency.”
But behind the political theater lies a troubling reality. The Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal recently published a report documenting 86 political prisoners currently held in the country, with at least 245 individuals facing political persecution since Bukele took office. These figures, reported by The Nation, include union leaders, activists, journalists—at least 53 of whom have been forced into exile—and human rights defenders themselves. The report alleges a “continued strategy of political repression that combines criminal, civil, administrative, and extrajudicial mechanisms to silence dissent, punish criticism, and neutralize pluralism in El Salvador.”
The crackdown has had tangible consequences. Cristosal, once a vocal watchdog, was forced to suspend its operations in El Salvador after its Chief Legal Officer for the Anti-Corruption Unit, Ruth López, was arrested in May 2025. Nearly a year later, López remains in pretrial detention. Cristosal’s executive director said the organization “had to choose between prison and exile.” This targeting of those who speak out against the government is, critics argue, a deliberate attempt by the Bukele administration to operate with impunity.
At the heart of the current crisis is the state of exception declared in 2022, which suspended certain constitutional rights in the name of combating gang violence. But according to a new report from the International Group of Experts for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations under the State of Emergency in El Salvador (GIPES), there are “reasonable grounds to believe crimes against humanity have been committed during the state of exception.” The report, cited by The Nation, says that these crimes—including arbitrary imprisonment, torture, murder, and enforced disappearances—are “the result of a policy known and promoted by the highest levels of government.”
While the Salvadoran government frames its actions as a necessary response to criminal threats, human rights defenders argue that the real aim is to crush dissent and consolidate power. Villatoro, in a pointed jab at international critics, told the Assembly, “your vote doesn’t count because you have no sovereign legitimacy over this country.” Yet, as the record shows, it is often Salvadorans themselves—like López and her colleagues at Cristosal—who pay the highest price for challenging the regime.
The reach of this crackdown is not limited to El Salvador’s borders. In March 2025, the United States deported 252 Venezuelan nationals and 36 Salvadorans to the country’s infamous CECOT megaprison. According to a petition submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by the Kennedy Human Rights Center and others, the deportees were subjected to brutal physical and psychological torture at CECOT: “brutal beatings, sleep deprivation, frequent solitary confinement, and sexual assault,” among other abuses.
The U.S. government justified these deportations by claiming the individuals were members of the violent transnational gang Tren de Aragua. However, as The Nation reports, evidence supporting these claims was often thin—sometimes based on innocuous tattoos or simply the fact that someone hailed from the Venezuelan state of Aragua. The deported men detailed the arbitrary and flimsy criteria used to link them to gang activity.
This collaboration between the U.S. and El Salvador has not escaped judicial scrutiny. On April 14, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered an end to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s criminal contempt inquiry into Trump administration officials over the 2025 deportations. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that Boasberg had committed a “clear abuse of discretion” by continuing the inquiry, and directed that the contempt proceedings be terminated, as reported by Colorado Politics.
The contempt inquiry had focused on whether officials, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, willfully violated Boasberg’s March 2025 order to halt deportation flights carrying Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador’s maximum-security prison. The appeals court found that the underlying temporary restraining order (TRO) did not clearly prohibit the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody, so it could not support criminal contempt charges. Judge Neomi Rao wrote, “The TRO did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody. The TRO therefore cannot support criminal contempt.”
The Supreme Court had previously overturned Boasberg’s original order, which had blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected gang members. Despite this, Boasberg pressed on with his inquiry, prompting the D.C. Circuit to intervene, warning that the district court’s actions risked improper intrusion into executive branch decision-making on national security and foreign affairs. The majority opinion stated, “The district court has assumed an improper jurisdiction antagonistic to the Executive Branch,” and said mandamus relief was necessary to “halt the inquest.”
The Trump administration, for its part, argued throughout the dispute that the contempt inquiry was unconstitutional and retaliatory, accusing Boasberg of trying to investigate internal executive deliberations after the Supreme Court had already vacated the underlying order.
All of these developments point to a growing convergence between the U.S. and El Salvador—both in rhetoric and in practice—when it comes to policing, incarceration, and the treatment of those labeled as threats to public order. As the collaboration deepens, so too do concerns about the erosion of due process and the normalization of human rights abuses on both sides of the border.
For the people of El Salvador, the stakes could not be higher. As the government expands its power to impose life sentences and cracks down on dissent, the space for civil society grows ever narrower. And as international partnerships reinforce these trends, the challenge of defending human rights in the region becomes all the more daunting.