source: Human Rights Watch

published: 27 June 2025

Image Credit: Idea go at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Arbitrary Detention Based on Quotas, Fabricated Evidence.

This article includes:

• Interviews with police officers and internal police documents reveal abusive practices that have led to arbitrary detention and abuse of power in El Salvador.
• Their accounts provide a rare insight into how the Salvadoran police have fabricated evidence to fulfill arrests quotas, extorted innocent people, bypassed due process, and defied court orders.
• Gang violence has decreased in El Salvador, but Salvadorans are not safe because they are exposed to abuses by the country’s unchecked security forces. Experience suggests the abusive behavior will only worsen and spread if police are not held strictly accountable.

Interviews with police officers and internal police documents reveal abusive practices that have led to arbitrary detention and abuse of power in El Salvador, Human Rights Watch said today.

Police officers told Human Rights Watch that many arrests during the ongoing “war against gangs” were the result of pressure on police officers to meet daily arrest quotas and were based on dubious or fabricated evidence.

They described arrests based on the fact that someone had a tattoo of any kind, on patently false information included in police reports, and on uncorroborated anonymous calls. The officers also described a climate of impunity that led some officers to demand bribes and, in some cases, demand sex from women in exchange for not arresting their relatives.

“President Nayib Bukele publicizes his security policies as a positive model for the world, but the police officers we spoke with tell a completely different story,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

“Their accounts provide a rare insight into how the Salvadoran police have fabricated evidence to fulfill arrests quotas, extorted innocent people, bypassed due process, and defied court orders.”

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