El Salvador's planned release of some prisoners falls short for many families

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s plan to release some prisoners detained during his government's mass crackdown on suspected gang members has frustrated families who say their relatives were unjustly held.

The families say the plan falls short of fully exonerating those wrongfully arrested or convicted and providing compensation for the psychological and financial toll of their imprisonment.

“What we want as family members is that they follow due process as they should have from the beginning, and that they review every case,” said Liliana de Reyes, a member of the Mothers for Freedom collective that advocates for their relatives’ release.

Her husband, Israel Reyes, was convicted in a mass trial of hundreds of alleged gang members in July that human rights groups say violates due process. Her son, Merlon Urias, is awaiting trial. Both are accused of “illicit association,” a catch-all term for anyone with alleged gang involvement. De Reyes insists they are innocent.

Bukele said at a news conference last week that his government was working on a plan that could lead to the release of up to 50% of the more than 90,000 people arrested under the country's state of exception , an emergency measure that suspends certain constitutional rights to fight gangs.

Since the measure took effect in March 2022 as part of a crackdown on the country’s two predominant gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, El Salvador's incarceration rate has soared to the highest in the world, with about 1.5% of its population behind bars.

Bukele has defended the mass arrests as necessary to improve public safety, and the crackdown has enjoyed widespread support among Salvadorans. Homicides reached a peak of 103 per 100,000 residents in 2015 and were at 53 per 100,000 in 2018, the year before Bukele took office. That number drastically decreased to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025, though experts say the numbers could be skewed because the government has narrowed its definition of homicide.

The president said the releases would focus on gang “collaborators,” a blanket term for people who help a gang in some way but are not initiated members.

Days later, Bukele clarified that his government was analyzing more than 10,000 cases involving alleged gang collaborators for potential conditional release. Half of those could be eligible for a program known as “Cero Ocio,” or “Zero Idleness,” where prisoners perform community service to reduce their sentences, he said.

Bukele’s office did not respond to a request for comment about criticism of the plan.

Since the crackdown began, human rights groups have documented thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests. The rushed speed of the mass arrests and a quota system for authorities meant that some people who had nothing to do with gangs were wrongfully imprisoned, they say. Rights that remain suspended include the right to be informed of the reasons for detention, access to legal counsel and visitation.

Many families have had no contact with their relatives, leaving them to wonder if they are alive. At least 564 people have died in state custody, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, or Humanitarian Legal Aid.

For relatives fighting for the release of their loved ones, anything less than a full exoneration is unacceptable.

“My son doesn’t have to accept any guilt because he doesn’t have any,” said Natalia Funes de Claros, whose son Óscar Orlando Rodríguez Funes, 41, was arrested for alleged illicit association in June 2022 and still awaits trial. “My son is 100% innocent.”

Funes de Claros, 62, said she has not heard from her son since his cellphone was taken away after his arrest. She worries that her son will be pressured into admitting guilt so that he can be released, which could have long-term consequences for him in El Salvador, including limiting his chances of getting a job.

She called on the government to compensate families such as hers for the trauma they’ve endured.

Funes de Claros lives as if her son were dead, she said. The impact on her physical and mental health has been grueling.

Shortly before he was arrested, her son told her he was seeing someone and she was pregnant, but Funes de Claros doesn't know how to contact her, so she has no idea if she has a grandchild. As a former farmer whose body can no longer take the arduous work, she has tried to scrape together $100 a month to deliver her son a package of basic food and hygiene products, since the government does not provide enough.

“The government needs to pay for what it has done,” Funes de Claros said.

For Arely Martínez, 41, the arrests of her two brothers on allegations of illicit association have impacted the entire family. One brother’s daughter was born while he was imprisoned and constantly asks for him. Their father died while David and Neftalí Martínez were imprisoned. They never got to say goodbye. Her son tried to join the military but couldn’t pass a background check because of his uncles' arrests.

Martínez criticized Bukele’s announcement for suggesting that even those potentially eligible for release are guilty. Her brothers are still awaiting trial.

“As mothers, sisters and wives, we all feel horrible about this because when he talks about releasing them conditionally, it’s as if he is convicting them and that’s not right,” Martínez said.

Still, she hopes her brothers will be released soon.

“I have faith,” she said. “I know that my brothers are innocent and that God is going to get them out of there.”

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