Watch Dateline’s latest film from El Salvador, once the ‘murder capital of the world’ that is now welcoming foreign tourists and Trump’s unwanted prisoners, on 22 April at 9.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
Diego Morales can’t believe how much his country has changed.
He grew up on the rural outskirts of El Salvador, in severe poverty during the civil war of the 1980s. But it was the deadly gang war that followed that forced him and more than a million Salvadorans to flee abroad.
He spent 30 years in the United States and vowed never to return to his home country.
During this time, two rival gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18 — formed on the streets of Los Angeles and brought to El Salvador through mass deportations — came to dominate the country, holding the population to ransom through extortion, sexual violence and murder.
That was, until 37-year-old former businessman and publicist Nayib Bukele came to power in 2019 and launched a dramatic crackdown on the gangs.
Morales decided to go back. He now owns a luxury beachside resort in the very spot where he grew up.
Diego Morales fled the violence in El Salvador and spent 30 years in the United States. He returned to run a luxury hotel, saying the country is now safe thanks to President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
It’s part of a redeveloped 21km stretch of coastline — known as Surf City — that’s aimed at attracting tourists.
Once dubbed for its high homicide rates, El Salvador now markets itself as the “land of surf, volcanoes and coffee”. It also became the first country in the world to recognise bitcoin as a legal form of currency.
Central America’s smallest nation — population about six million — welcomed a record 3.2 million foreign visitors last year, an increase of 40 per cent since 2019.
Morales says his life now is totally different to when he was a child.
“Bukele has done a lot of things but one of those things is bringing peace to this country,” he told Dateline.
“You can leave the doors open and nothing’s going to happen. We feel great.”
The 43-year-old president Nayib Bukele has brought bitcoin, the Miss Universe pageant, and safety to El Salvador, but critics say peace and security have come at the expense of human rights. Source: AFP
The controversial crackdown
Like Morales, many Salvadorans credit the swift turnaround in security to Bukele and his iron-fist approach to dealing with the gangs.
The 43-year-old Bukele has enjoyed high approval ratings and was re-elected for a second term last year with 84 per cent of the vote.
However, his governance style has drawn criticism for being increasingly authoritarian and repressive. In response, he changed his Twitter bio to ‘the world’s coolest dictator’.
Bukele’s mission to stop the gangs started in March 2022, after 87 people were murdered in a single weekend.
He declared a 30-day state of exception, suspending some constitutional rights and allowing the authorities to arrest anyone suspected of gang affiliation without a warrant.
More than 80,000 people have been jailed under the state of exception, which is still in place, making El Salvador the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world.
There are currently 110,000 people held in prisons.
Critics have accused the Bukele administration of setting arrest quotas, indiscriminately targeting people based on their tattoos, some allegedly artistic and not linked to the gangs. The El Salvadorian government has rejected those claims.
Human rights groups condemned the inhumane conditions in overcrowded prisons. The officials say it’s part of the punishment. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
On 20 December 2024, marking 1,000 days of the state of exception that was meant to be a temporary measure, Amnesty International censured El Salvador’s “peace and security at the expense of human rights”.
The organisation pointed to thousands of arbitrary detentions, inhumane conditions in detention centres and prisons, as well as torture and deaths in state custody.
Since the state of exception began, over 350 people have died in prisons, according to Salvadoran human rights groups.
Strengthening relations with Trump
But Bukele’s “war on gangs” has caught the attention of one world leader: US President Donald Trump.
El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele became the first Latin American leader to receive an invitation to the White House from the Trump administration, marking a sign of strengthening relations between the two countries over US deportation plans. Source: Getty / Win McNamee
El Salvador has already taken in more than without due process on suspicion of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang — despite the fact that a US federal judge declared the deportations illegal.
In return, the US is paying El Salvador roughly US$6 million ($9.5 million).
Among the deportees was , a Salvadoran man who had lived in the US legally, had no criminal record, and was granted protection from being sent back to his home country. The Trump administration admitted that his deportation was “an administrative error” but has refused to return him to the US despite a Supreme Court order.
Hosted by Trump at the White House on 14 April, Bukele said: “We know that you have a crime problem and a terrorism problem that you need help with. And we’re a small country, but we can help.”
Trump indicated that El Salvador would continue to be a key part of his immigration crackdown, saying he wanted to send “as many as possible” to the country, even US citizens convicted of violent crimes.
“And I just asked the president, this massive complex that he built, jail complex. I said: ‘Can you build some more of them, please?”
The CECOT prison
The jail complex Trump referred to is the Terrorism Confinement Centre, or CECOT in Spanish, a maximum-security prison. Dateline was granted access to it by government officials.
Opened in 2023, it can house 40,000 inmates, although the government doesn’t disclose the exact number of people currently held there.
CECOT, a massive jail complex, opened in 2023 and can house up to 40,000 inmates. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
Conditions are harsh: the lights never go out, inmates sleep on metal frames without mattresses in overcrowded cells, which they are allowed to leave for only 30 minutes a day, says CECOT director Belarmino Garcia.
He says rival gang members are deliberately placed in the same cells so that “they must learn how to live together in a confined context”. But he denies it has resulted in outbreaks of violence or deaths.
No visits of any kind are allowed, not even from family or lawyers. The only outside contact the inmates have is through choreographed tours for the media.
According to Human Rights Watch, the authorities have denied human rights groups access to CECOT and have only allowed journalists and social media influencers to visit it “under highly controlled circumstances”.
“While CECOT may have more modern infrastructure, its mistreatment of detainees is similar to other Salvadoran prisons,” the Human Rights Watch statement from 20 March 2025 reads.
CECOT director Belarmino Garcia gives journalists a tour of the prison. He’s the only CECOT employee who shows his face to the inmates and the public. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
Garcia doesn’t apologise for the harsh conditions for the inmates, many of whom have not yet been convicted.
“It is the least they deserve, ” he told Dateline.
“They were the ones who had our population on their knees, they had our society captive. Our society couldn’t go out safely; it couldn’t rest peacefully because these people would intimidate them daily.
“Now, there is a successful recovery in our country, families can go out at any time of the night without fear because those individuals are here.”
Swept up in the crackdown
As a small business owner in El Salvador, Alfredo Mejia was threatened by local gang members for decades. He was relieved when they were locked up.
But while the state of exception took the gang members off the streets, it also swept up thousands of civilians who say they’re innocent, including Mejia’s 22-year-old daughter, Carla.
Alfredo Mejía was relieved when the gangs were locked up, but the crackdown also swept up his 22-year-old daughter Carla who he says is innocent. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
She was arrested for not having her identity document in 2022, and he hasn’t had any contact with her since.
“We feel helpless because we don’t know if she is eating, if she is sick, what she is suffering from, and that is hard,” he said.
“After two months, [it] is not a regime of exception anymore, it is a regime of repression.”
Bukele has admitted 8,000 people were wrongfully imprisoned under his crackdown and have now been released.
But human rights lawyer Ingrid Escobar says around 30 per cent of those arrested on gang charges are innocent.
“Of these 83,000, we estimate that at least 25,000 Salvadorans have absolutely no link with gangs but are being processed as if they do,” she says.
Human rights lawyer Ingrid Escobar’s organisation is legally representing 6,000 people who claim they’ve been wrongfully imprisoned, including human rights activists. Source: SBS / Simon Phegan
Escobar’s organisation is legally representing 6,000 people, including human rights activists, who say they’ve been wrongfully imprisoned.
She says the change in the country’s reputation isn’t being felt by all.
“Bukele says our country is a paradise for the world. If that were true, we would not have to live under the state of exception. People are poor every day in El Salvador. Tourism? And economic take-off? For whom? For the foreigners.”
But El Salvador’s security and justice minister, Gustavo Villatoro, says reports from NGOs and journalists on human rights abuses are false.
“What does the regime of exception mean for millions of Salvadorans? It means freedom, it means peace, it means security, and it means giving them back their hope.”
Watch more from Dateline from El Salvador:
