El Salvadoran Committee Backs Extending Detention of Suspected Gang Members Until 2027

Representative Caleb Navarro said lawmakers were closing loopholes and strengthening justice to ensure criminals cannot again terrorize Salvadoran families.

A guard watches inmates allegedly linked to criminal organizations sitting on the floor at the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025. Salvadoran Government via Getty Images

El Salvador’s congressional security committee on Aug. 14 backed the extension of the pretrial detention of tens of thousands of suspected gang members for another two years.

The National Security and Justice Committee supported the reforms to the country’s Law Against Organized Crime, giving prosecutors until August 2027 to build cases against the 88,750 suspects in prison.

Lawmakers on the committee said the extension was necessary to enable prosecutors to carry out their duties, preserve procedural safeguards for detainees, and ensure judges could properly handle trials.

In July 2023, the Central American country’s congress approved group trials of the suspected gang members, with roughly 600 collective cases being processed by 44 organized crime judges.

The proposals were backed less than two weeks before the previous two-year deadline was set to expire on Aug. 25.

These measures will still have to be passed by a vote of the full Legislature. But as with the committee that proposed the plans, the Legislature is controlled by the ruling Nuevas Ideas (“new ideas”) party, meaning the proposals will likely go through.

State of Emergency

The suspects were arrested and detained under a Salvadoran state of emergency imposed since March 2022, as part of President Nayib Bukele’s suppression of criminal gangs.

At the committee meeting, Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said that gangs have been identified as an enemy of the people of El Salvador.

Delgado said, according to an X post from the Attorney General’s Office, “We need this type of reform because the goal is to establish a specialized and dynamic procedural model that ensures justice is effective and swift, and that responds to the entire dynamic of arrests and the processing of 88,750 individuals identified as belonging to these gang groups.”

Representative Caleb Navarro, a member of Nuevas Ideas, said in a post on X on Thursday that he and his colleagues had worked to “refine the legal tools that allow us to strike harder against gangs and criminal structures.”

“We are closing legal loopholes, strengthening judicial processes, and fortifying the country so that no criminal will ever again have the power that once allowed them to terrorize Salvadoran families,” Navarro said.

“This is a serious fight, with no setbacks and no leniency. El Salvador is no longer fertile ground for crime, and we will ensure it stays that way.”

Bukele’s Crackdown on Gangs

Bukele was first elected as president of El Salvador in 2019 and was reelected in 2024 after the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal allowed him to run again, despite the constitution prohibiting it.

On July 31, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved constitutional changes that allow a president to seek reelection indefinitely and extend presidential terms from five to six years, paving the way for Bukele to serve potential future terms.

The president has seen his popularity rise in El Salvador, thanks, in part, to his government’s suppression of violence and powerful street gangs, including the construction of the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center (known by its Spanish acronym, CECOT), a mega-prison roughly 45 miles east of the capital, San Salvador.

In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries. In 2023, there were 214 homicides, and in 2024, there was a record low of 114.

El Salvador has formed a close relationship with the United States, and in February, Bukele agreed to accept deported illegal immigrants from the United States, including gang members from El Salvador’s MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time, “No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this.”

While El Salvador has seen murders plummet, human rights groups have criticized the measures.

In April, Amnesty International said El Salvador was implementing a “systematic state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty,” and that after three years, more than 85,000 people are imprisoned without sufficient evidence, “the victims of a judicial system now transformed into a tool for collective punishment and widespread repression.”

Reuters and Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.