{"id":3390,"date":"2026-07-16T16:38:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hometransferguide.com\/?p=3390"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:38:48","slug":"how-el-salvador-beat-the-gang-problem-america-still-cant-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hometransferguide.com\/?p=3390","title":{"rendered":"How El Salvador Beat The Gang Problem America Still Can\u2019t Control"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As President Donald Trump\u2019s administration works to curb violent crime, El Salvador offers a stark example of a country that confronted its notorious gangs with aggressive measures.<\/div>\n

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In January, officials charged three criminal illegal aliens from El Salvador who were allegedly members of MS-13 with murdering a 14-year-old boy in Maryland, according<\/span> to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Two of the suspects had previously been arrested and released before allegedly taking part in the killing. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Daily Caller Documentary Goes Inside The Mega-Prison That Crushed El Salvador\u2019s Gangs)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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El Salvador, meanwhile, has largely broken the grip of the gangs that once terrorized the country. Its homicide rate is now roughly one-third that of the United States, according to preliminary FBI data and published reports.<\/p>\n

But that was not always the case. Although El Salvador now boasts a homicide rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people, the figure stood at 104 per 100,000 just a decade ago.<\/p>\n

So what changed? And could the United States apply any of the same lessons to drive down its own violent crime?<\/p>\n

MS-13 wasn\u2019t founded in El Salvador; it was the product of Salvadoran civil war refugees fleeing to Los Angeles, where many joined gang organizations before being deported back to their home country in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen these people deported from the United States started to come\u2026 these organizations of tattooed individuals, covered in numbers and letters we didn\u2019t recognize, began to flourish,\u201d Security and Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro told the Daily Caller. \u201cThese kinds of people weren\u2019t normal for our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the government lacking sufficient power to stop them, the gangs rapidly spread violence and extortion throughout the country, infiltrating neighborhoods, businesses and political institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived my whole life in gangs, ever since I was in the United States,\u201d MS-13 member and prisoner Marvin Ernesto Medrano V\u00e1zquez told the Caller. V\u00e1zquez, who said he had murdered more than 30 people, added: \u201cJust as I committed crimes there, I came here to commit crimes. I\u2019ve always lived like this, for my life is to kill.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And kill they did. Over 111,000 homicides<\/span> were recorded in the country between 1994 and 2018. Salvadorans told the Caller that gang violence had been an inescapable part of life for nearly a quarter-century, with many residents too afraid to leave their homes for fear of being killed.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2022, President Nayib Bukele declared war on the gangs.<\/p>\n

His crackdown would make Trump\u2019s campaign against criminal illegal aliens \u2014which has itself faced allegations of human rights violations from the left \u2014 seem like a stroll in the park.<\/p>\n

Bukele used his political mandate to enact the Territorial Control Plan, boosting law enforcement capabilities and sending officers door to door and neighborhood to neighborhood, forcing gang members off the streets and into prisons.<\/p>\n

The crackdown produced another challenge as authorities arrested an estimated more than one percent of the country\u2019s population, leaving officials with two pressing questions: How could they prosecute so many people, and where could they hold them afterward?<\/p>\n

To speed up prosecutions, Bukele\u2019s party took some creative liberties.<\/p>\n

The first was through the Legislative Assembly, where Bukele\u2019s Nuevas Ideas supermajority enacted a constitutional process known as the State of Exception. The measure suspended several constitutional protections, including the right to be informed of the reason for an arrest, access to legal counsel during the initial stages of detention, limits on the length of administrative detention and protections for private communications.<\/p>\n

Though initially presented as temporary, the State of Exception has remained popular enough for the Legislature to renew it every 30 days since March 27, 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor serious crimes, El Salvador is not granting measures other than pretrial detention,\u201d Attorney General Rodolfo Antonio Delgado Montes told the Caller. \u201cAll Salvadorans are aware that there are two types of citizens. The ordinary citizen, who works hard \u2026 and who, due to misfortune or bad decisions, may at some point commit a crime. These people must be treated differently than a gang member with a criminal record\u2026 these latter people I\u2019ve mentioned are, in reality, enemies of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bukele\u2019s government also abandoned the conventional practice of prosecuting every suspect solely for his individual crimes. Instead, authorities put the criminal organizations themselves on trial and imposed sentences based in part on each defendant\u2019s position within the gang. (RELATED: From Bloodshed To Bukele: A Timeline Of El Salvador\u2019s War, Gangs And Crackdown)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat El Salvador is contributing to the world is\u2026 an advance of criminal law towards ownership, which we cannot follow, expecting to go case by case, homicide by homicide,\u201d Villatoro told the Caller. \u201cWe already tried that for twenty years, and we couldn\u2019t defeat this organization. We have to understand that the organization has a personality; therefore, all members have to answer for the crimes of the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bukele also determined that El Salvador\u2019s existing prisons were insufficient, both in their capacity and their ability to contain terrorists.<\/p>\n

Belarmino Garc\u00eda, the director of Bukele\u2019s solution \u2014 a \u201csupermax\u201d prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) \u2014 told the Caller during a tour of the facility that one of the biggest problems in the country\u2019s previous prisons was that gang leaders were often able to communicate and run their operations from inside their cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, we can rest easy knowing that these individuals are under control because we have them under 24-hour monitoring,\u201d Garc\u00eda said.<\/p>\n

Completed in 2023, CECOT was built to hold up to 40,000 inmates and has yet to see a single escape attempt, Garc\u00eda claimed.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Bukele and Trump struck a deal<\/span> under which the Trump administration agreed to pay El Salvador $6 million to hold close to 300 alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and but two dozen alleged MS-13 members at CECOT for one year. <\/p>\n

Trump has gone even further in emulating elements of Bukele\u2019s Territorial Control Plan, leading a nationwide crackdown on criminal illegal alien gang members. In late June, the Department of Homeland Security announced<\/span> it had arrested its 10,000th alleged gang member since the beginning of Trump\u2019s second term \u2014 an alleged member of MS-13.<\/p>\n

Still, with an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants<\/span> in the U.S. as of 2023 and roughly 731,000 active gang members<\/span> as of 2009, the question remains: What can the U.S. learn from El Salvador?<\/p>\n