T remembers the fear when she was deported from the U.S. to El Salvador late last year. A transgender woman who asked to be identified only by her first initial for safety, T says Salvadoran authorities at the airport forced her to strip as they checked tattoos for gang affiliations. They asked about any criminal record; she had none. She was allowed to go to her parents’ home but was told local officers could stop and question her at any time. Terrified, she barely left home for a month.
T’s experience is not unique. Since January 2025, more than 9,000 Salvadorans have been deported from the U.S., Human Rights Watch reported in March 2026. NPR’s reporting shows many deportees vanish into El Salvador’s prison system immediately after arrival or in the weeks that follow. Detainees are often held incommunicado, cut off from family and lawyers for months or longer.
The surge in arrests and detentions traces back to March 2022, when President Nayib Bukele declared a “state of exception” after a spate of gang killings. Although the emergency powers were supposed to last 30 days, Bukele has renewed them repeatedly. Human rights groups say the extended measure has created an effective police state that has lasted four years and produced widespread rights violations.
The security push did reduce El Salvador’s homicide rate, but it also produced a massive spike in incarceration. Tens of thousands have been detained under the state of exception; reporting based on official data by El País estimates nearly 92,000 arrests, and the country now has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates. Rights groups say many detainees were not gang members before the crackdown—64% of those arrested, the El País analysis found, had been listed as gang members in intelligence files prior to 2022.
Notable among the detention sites is CECOT, a notorious maximum-security mega-prison. The Bukele government temporarily housed hundreds of Venezuelan deportees there under a $6 million agreement with the Trump administration; those Venezuelans were later released. But many Salvadoran nationals deported from the U.S. remain imprisoned.
Families of deportees describe agonizing uncertainty. Jennifer Kesselberg Dubon, a U.S. citizen in Nebraska, has not spoken to her husband since he was deported and jailed in 2023. She says he had no gang ties but was accused of associating with gangs after his return. “In all honesty, he may be dead,” she told NPR, choking back tears. A San Salvador human rights group, Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, reports at least 517 Salvadorans have died in prisons since the state of exception began.
Legal advocates warn deportees are at risk because U.S. and Salvadoran authorities share information about criminal histories and even unverified suspicions of gang links. Sarah Bishop, a Baruch College professor who studies post-deportation outcomes, follows 25 men returned from the U.S. over the last four years; 19 were incarcerated upon or soon after arrival. Bishop says deportees can be arrested for little more than prior arrests in the U.S. or El Salvador, and many are fearful of leaving home because of potential police violence.
Under the state of exception, detention frequently means loss of contact with the outside world. Grace, who asked to be identified by a nickname because she still lives in El Salvador, said her brother was detained immediately after his 2025 deportation. He had been acquitted of a statutory rape charge in 2021, she said, yet is now accused of collaborating with gangs. She last saw him being processed into prison in October and has not heard from him since.
Immigrant-rights attorneys in the U.S. say appeals can sometimes halt or reverse deportations, and if a U.S. court wins an appeal the federal government must bring the deportee back. Jonathan Levy, director of pro bono programs at American Gateways, represents several Salvadoran deportees and says the U.S. government must evaluate whether a detainee faces a likelihood of torture or death if returned. He warned that evidence shows some people sent to El Salvador end up dead in detention.
Levy also said recent changes under the Trump administration have made it harder to prevent deportations to El Salvador. He and other lawyers are continuing appeals in hopes of winning cases that could set precedents and bring clients back. That is the path T is pursuing; she is back in U.S. immigration detention appealing her removal order.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about whether it is aware of deportee disappearances or concerns about El Salvador’s state of exception, referring queries to the Salvadoran government. A Bukele spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about allegations of abuses or detentions tied to the emergency powers.
Human rights organizations have condemned the state of exception as enabling widespread violations against detainees, opposition figures and returnees. Advocates say the only realistic hope for families separated from deportees is for Bukele to restore due process and transparency in El Salvador’s justice system so relatives and lawyers can learn where detainees are and how they are faring.