President Fernández will travel to El Salvador on Friday to tour the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the mega-prison at the center of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. The visit comes two days after she opened a Costa Rican prison built on its model.
Fernández confirmed the official visit yesterday at the inauguration of the High Containment Center Against Organized Crime (CACCO), a 5,100-inmate facility at the La Reforma prison complex in Alajuela. She said Costa Rica now has the structure and wants to see how El Salvador runs its prisons day to day.
The trip follows a formal invitation from Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco. According to the invitation, Fernández will hold a bilateral meeting with Bukele on strategic and regional issues and visit CECOT in Tecoluca, in the department of San Vicente, to see the results of El Salvador’s security model.
Fernández said she would also review Bukele’s newly announced proposal to conditionally release some prisoners convicted of collaborating with gangs, and raise it at Friday’s meeting. She said she does not usually comment on other presidents’ policy decisions, but that given how much cooperation El Salvador has provided, anything of value would be studied.
Bukele announced the plan on Tuesday and he said it could cover about half of gang-linked prisoners, specifically those who did not play a central role in violent crimes, including residents who cooperated with gangs under threat or pressure. Gang leaders and people convicted of crimes such as homicide and rape would be excluded.
Bukele said beneficiaries would not be pardoned and would remain under state supervision while finishing their sentences outside prison, though he has not said when the program would begin or how many people would qualify. El Salvador’s influence on the CACCO is direct as Fernández said the project, pushed under former President Rodrigo Chaves Robles, was inspired by CECOT and developed with Salvadoran technical assistance, and El Salvador’s Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro and Defense Minister René Merino Monrroy attended Wednesday’s opening.
The prison has five modules of 1,020 beds each and cost 16.774 billion colones, about $37 million at the current exchange rate. Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar said it will operate with round-the-clock electronic monitoring, video surveillance and strict entry and exit controls designed to block contraband and keep criminal groups from directing operations from inside.
The facility will not hold anyone until late October. Aguilar said the Penitentiary Police, who take control of the building on Thursday, need time to learn its modules and equipment before the first transfers. The first inmates will be high-risk prisoners now held in La Reforma‘s high-containment unit, each moved after an individual technical and legal review. Aguilar said the first cell will go, at Fernández’s request, to the man accused of killing police officer Gerson Rosales.
The inauguration also deepened the government’s clash with the judiciary. Magistrates, judges and prosecutors were invited but did not attend, and their empty seats were shown during the ceremony. Fernández said some magistrates, prosecutors and judges are on the side of criminals and stayed away because they dislike a hard-line approach. She also blamed the leadership of the judicial branch for a lack of coordination between institutions.
Human rights organizations have alleged arbitrary detentions under the state of exception El Salvador has kept in place since March 2022. Bukele said this week that he would like to lift it but still considers it necessary while gang structures remain active, and Fernández did not address the allegations yesterday.
The government has not said whether any cooperation agreements will be signed during the visit. Fernández is expected back in Costa Rica on Sunday.
