Ana Mercedes García spends her nights praying for her son, a construction worker with no criminal record who has been held in pretrial detention for three years. Prosecutors have already admitted he was wrongly accused of being a gang member.
Her son, Ricardo Ernesto Martínez, was arrested on May 10, 2022, under President Nayib Bukele’s sweeping anti-gang campaign. Although the charges were dismissed, he remains in prison without trial.
Launched in 2022, Bukele’s “war” against gangs is backed by a state of emergency that allows arrests without court orders. The crackdown has driven homicide rates to historic lows, but human rights groups say thousands of innocent people are imprisoned.
Under a legal reform passed by Bukele’s allies in Congress, detainees can now remain in custody until August 2027 while prosecutors prepare some 600 mass trials. “It’s an extreme injustice,” García told AFP from her adobe home in Cuyultitán, near San Salvador. “My son owes nothing, but he will have to pay for something he didn’t do.”
She says prison authorities even ignored two written orders from the prosecutor’s office in 2023 calling for her son’s release. One of the letters stated there was insufficient evidence to proceed with prosecution.
Human rights NGO Cristosal called the extension of pretrial detention “irrational and unjustifiable,” arguing that holding someone for five years without trial “turns detention into an anticipated sentence.” So far, some 88,000 people have been detained under the state of emergency, with about 8,000 later released for lack of evidence.
This week, Bukele acknowledged the suffering of families but blamed parents for not instilling discipline. “I imagine it must be a horrible pain, as a mother, to have a child in prison,” he said, adding that the responsibility lay with those who “did not discipline their children.”
Concerns Over Mass Trials
Parents and lawyers also fear the coming mass trials, where groups of 800 to 1,200 defendants could be tried together. “That’s serious, because if they move forward with that type of procedure, many innocent people will be condemned,” said attorney Félix López, whose 27-year-old son has been imprisoned since February.
The trials break the principle of individual criminal responsibility, he added. Other families share the same anguish. In April 2022, 23-year-old Nelson Antonio Fuentes was detained on his way to work at the state-run Road Maintenance Fund. His mother, Juana Fuentes, worries he will be tried alongside strangers.
“I wish they would investigate each case properly,” she said from her modest home in Mejicanos, a district outside San Salvador. “Whoever is guilty should pay, but the innocent should be released.”
In July, she learned through a TikTok video that her son was alive and working on the reconstruction of a school.
