SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — President Nayib Bukele says his government is studying a program that could let roughly half of the people jailed under El Salvador’s long-running state of emergency leave prison early on conditions.
Bukele floated the idea Tuesday night during a question session that followed an energy investment announcement. He said the program would cover people judged to have collaborated with gangs, a wide category that can take in anyone from lookouts to residents who paid extortion.
The president stressed that those released would still be considered guilty. He described it as an early, conditional release with monitoring, with each case reviewed individually, and argued that so many people helped gangs out of necessity that jailing all of them would mean locking up about a fifth of the country.
He did not say when the program might start, how many prisoners would qualify or what the criteria would be. Authorities have arrested more than 90,000 people since the emergency began in March 2022, under rules that suspended or limited some constitutional protections, including access to a lawyer.
Security has become the centerpiece of the Bukele government since 2022. Government data put the 2025 homicide rate at 1.3 per 100,000 people, down from a 2015 peak above 100, though the government has narrowed what counts as a homicide, leaving out killings by police and deaths inside prisons.
Human rights groups at home and abroad have long accused the government of arbitrary arrests and of eroding due process under the emergency, and have pressed Bukele to end it. Bukele has brushed off that criticism, saying the groups should side with victims of gang violence.
