When the cops arrived at a party in Cant\u00f3n la Estancia, a tiny hamlet in the shadow of the San Miguel volcano, Walter Josu\u00e9 Huete Alvarado didn\u2019t think he had any reason to worry. He had a minor infraction on his criminal record \u2014 a DUI when he was a teenager \u2014 but that shouldn\u2019t matter in El Salvador. It happened in the United States, where\u00a0he is a citizen. Yet Alvarado\u2019s U.S. passport didn\u2019t deter Salvadoran police from dragging him away, pointing to the tattoos on his hands and claiming he was a member of MS-13.<\/p>\n
It was May 2023, the third year of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. Alvarado, his relatives and legal counsel told The Intercept, is still incarcerated in El Salvador.<\/p>\n
Two years before the second Trump administration targeted Kilmar \u00c1brego Garc\u00eda over his tattoos and sent him to a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Biden State Department was made aware of Alvarado\u2019s detention \u2014 and, for reasons of diplomacy and optics, did nothing. Today, the world has seen the viral images of men lined up at El Salvador\u2019s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT \u2014 heads shaved, crammed front-to-back and forced to straddle each other \u2014 as a result of Donald Trump\u2019s brutal deportation regime. But according to lawyer Jorge Palacios, the total number of U.S. citizens and residents detained in El Salvador\u2019s less prominent prisons and jails is unknown.<\/p>\n
Palacios, who brought Alvarado\u2019s case before the United Nations, said that members of his group, Socorro Jur\u00eddico Humanitario,\u00a0\u201chave had people come to them saying their detained relatives are U.S. citizens who were visiting,\u201d as was the case with Alvarado. Families often lose touch with their loved ones after their arrests, so \u201cexact details are limited.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Alvarado\u2019s case, a Salvadoran police report, testimony from two of his closest relatives, and insight from legal experts offer a relatively clear picture of what happened.\u00a0At the police station in Moncagua, officers disregarded his American citizenship and stomped on his passport, telling him it was worthless. Alvarado had a tattoo of the letters \u201cL.A.\u201d \u2014 the city of his birth \u2014\u00a0but officers insisted it represented the city where MS-13 was formed. A \u201cW\u201d \u2014\u00a0his first initial \u2014 was actually an inverted \u201cM,\u201d they said, and a dollar sign was an obscured \u201cS.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police report says Alvarado\u2019s tattoos were \u201cambiguous, and there is no documentary or evidentiary support indicating that Mr. Huete Alvarado belongs to any gang, organization, or structure involved in the commission of criminal acts.\u201d It was determined that \u201cthe police procedure may have been dysfunctional due to the lack of certainty regarding the individual\u2019s belonging to or links with gangs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Related
\n CECOT Is What the Bukele Regime Wants You to See<\/p>\n
Alvarado has been shuffled between a handful of prisons and penal institutions in the nearly three years since then, never receiving a trial. His situation is in many ways exceptional, given his nationality, but it reflects the broader crisis facing countless families in El Salvador struggling to understand their loved ones\u2019 perpetual, often inexplicable detentions. As similar models of criminalization are being\u00a0rolled out\u00a0across Latin America, Alvarado\u2019s case may offer a preview of things to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Alvarado was detained, the country of his birth was led by a Biden presidency that had, from the beginning,\u00a0pitched\u00a0its commitment to \u201cupholding universal rights\u201d as the \u201cgrounding wire of our global policy, our global power.\u201d But since the Biden administration neglected to intervene in Alvarado\u2019s detention, the authority with the best shot at saving him now is the second Trump administration, ideologically aligned with El Salvador\u2019s reactionary leadership and its sweeping gang crackdown. Now, the Salvadoran regime that has effectively disappeared thousands into an opaque network of prisons without trials is more emboldened than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alvarado\u2019s family was initially supportive of Nayib Bukele, the bearded, grinning, bitcoin-boosting millennial and self-described dictator who rose to power the first time Trump was in office and has held onto it,\u00a0despite a Salvadoran constitutional prohibition, into a second consecutive term. Murder was\u00a0declining\u00a0when Bukele became president in 2019, but many Salvadorans still felt trapped by widespread gang violence and drug trafficking. Bukele, like his predecessors, at first brokered a clandestine truce with gang leaders \u2014 providing \u201cfinancial incentive\u201d to artificially reduce the number of homicides.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pact fell apart in early 2022, and murders hit a 30-year high in a single day. Bukele enacted his \u201cstate of exception,\u201d which allowed his government to suspend constitutional rights for 30 days, paving the way for an unfettered war on organized crime. Bukele and his governing Nuevas Ideas party have renewed the suspension 39 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Related
\n She Exposed Government Abuse. Now She\u2019s Locked Up in an El Salvador Prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Bukele\u2019s government has arrested more than 90,000 Salvadorans, close to 2 percent of the population, including thousands of\u00a0minors. Human rights experts and lawyers estimate that as many as half of everyone detained under the state of exception have no known gang connections. Prisons are overflowing, with the cumulative system\u00a0operating\u00a0at over 300 percent capacity.<\/p>\n
By some standards, El Salvador is now considered one of the safest countries in Latin America. Bukele touts record lows in homicide and last year claimed 861 consecutive days without a murder \u2014 though, as the Washington Office on Latin America\u00a0noted, the tally did not include the more than 427 people who\u00a0have died in custody\u00a0since the state of exception was\u00a0decreed. Voters, in turn, have\u00a0expressed\u00a0overwhelming support: Bukele had an 85 percent approval rating as of June 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others, like Alvarado\u2019s family \u2014\u00a0with members in both El Salvador and the U.S. \u2014 soured on the regime once their relatives disappeared under the state of exception.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration soured on Bukele, too. Initial optimism that the young right-wing leader would bring much-needed reform soon turned to criticism of El Salvador\u2019s \u201cdemocratic backsliding.\u201d In May 2021, then-Vice President Kamala Harris\u00a0denounced\u00a0Bukele\u2019s illegal removal of the country\u2019s attorney general and the dismissal of five of its Supreme Court judges who had tried to stop him from overriding the constitution. The State Department\u00a0sanctioned several members of Bukele\u2019s inner circle for bribery and undermining democratic processes, and the Treasury Department sanctioned two more for their role in the secret gang truce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bukele\u00a0came into conflict\u00a0with the interim U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, claiming on social media that Manes had tried to pressure him into freeing a politician charged with corruption. In November 2021, Manes temporarily suspended diplomatic relations with El Salvador.<\/p>\n
Yet Alvarado\u2019s case didn\u2019t get the treatment of a high-profile American detained by an authoritarian pariah state, like Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned in Russia just two months before Alvarado traveled to El Salvador. By May 2023, the Biden State Department had decided that Bukele\u2019s mercurial nature and tendency to lash out warranted a softer touch. No longer would they scold out in the open. Instead, according to a former State Department official familiar with the matter, the National Security Council emphasized back-channeling over public condemnation.<\/p>\n
State Department apparatchiks hoped that smoothing relations with Bukele would help them maintain El Salvador\u2019s cooperation on immigration enforcement and counternarcotics, an official who worked under the Biden administration explained to\u00a0The Intercept, and that an impending loan from the International Monetary Fund would trigger more transparency. The Bukele administration maintained that the state of exception would at some vague point be wound down, and Manes\u2019s replacement, William H. Duncan, insisted on handling any concerns about the country\u2019s punitive turn behind closed doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Duncan, per two former State Department employees who asked not to be named for fear of professional consequences, \u201cwas very difficult to work with.\u201d He insisted on being the only point of contact to Bukele. Efforts by members of the State Department\u2019s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, or WHA, to bring attention to Alvarado\u2019s case proved ineffective. Duncan\u2019s embassy was aware of the case, but\u00a0he wasn\u2019t enthusiastic about efforts to push for more visits from embassy legal counselors for Alvarado. Duncan shut down anyone who tried to push for any other lateral communication, \u201cespecially any criticism,\u201d one of the State Department sources said.<\/p>\n
These tactics would culminate in an almost subservient brand of appeasement. In June 2024, after Bukele had successfully run for a consecutive (and constitutionally prohibited) term as president, a robust delegation of Biden officials led by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas \u2014 and flanked by Duncan and the WHA\u2019s Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols \u2014 attended the Salvadoran strongman\u2019s second inauguration.\u00a0(Duncan and Nichols did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s requests for comment.)<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the visit, Secretary Mayorkas met with President Bukele to discuss the many cultural, and economic ties our two countries share and reaffirmed the mutual commitment to address our common challenges,\u201d a DHS press briefing\u00a0reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alvarado had spent just over a year behind bars.<\/p>\n
Alvarado\u2019s\u00a0absence has been especially difficult for his daughters. His stepdaughter \u201cfeels guilty,\u201d said a relative, who requested anonymity for fear of targeting by the U.S. government. \u201cAt first it was really, really hard, because she was like, \u2018I feel like it\u2019s my fault.\u2019\u201d After getting support at school, she showed signs of improvement, the relative said, but \u201cwhen she turned 15, she was like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to have anything, because Walter\u2019s not here.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
His youngest daughter was just 2 when her father was arrested. She has started asking if Alvarado has passed away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bukele\u2019s army of\u00a0internet trolls has mocked the family, expressing loyalty to a president they see as an effective leader against gang violence.\u00a0When they posted about Alvarado\u2019s detention, the family told The Intercept, they would be greeted by accusations that he was, in fact, a gangster who deserved to be punished.<\/p>\n
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The Salvadoran president\u2019s popularity can be explained, in part, by previous administrations\u2019 inability to reckon with the country\u2019s post-war contradictions. El Salvador\u2019s reconciliation process in the early 1990s, overseen by the United States and the ultra-conservative Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, or ARENA, party, paved the way for the selling of the country\u2019s telecommunications, banking, and energy infrastructure off to the highest bidder and exported the country\u2019s natural commodities through the\u00a0use\u00a0of cheap labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0austerity regime\u00a0made prime breeding ground for an intricate network of organized crime in the country. The U.S. expelled Salvadoran refugees who had gotten caught up in Los Angeles drug trafficking scene, allowing La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, to blossom in El Salvador\u2019s urban centers. Successive governments implemented tough-on-crime policies dubbed mano dura, Spanish for \u201ciron fist,\u201d to no avail, and populist, left-wing politicians found it difficult to unravel this Gordian knot through redistributive politics alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough, but replacing gang violence with state violence is not the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s perfectly understandable that people support Bukele because he resolved an issue that was really hurting people,\u201d Vicki Gass, the executive director of the Latin America Working Group, told\u00a0The Intercept. \u201cYou\u2019re not making a lot of money. You get remittances from your dad living in the United States. It gets extorted. A friend of mine had his whole workshop and tools stolen. You know, his livelihood, right? It was tough, but replacing gang violence with state violence is not the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boosting the image of state violence has become a useful propaganda tool of the Bukele government. The strategy is most clearly captured by CECOT, the state-of-the-art supermax prison where \u00c1brego Garc\u00eda was sent last year. But it is only one of 24\u00a0prisons\u00a0in the country.<\/p>\n
Alvarado was first sent to the Centro Penal de Izalco, an older prison where detainees are fed a spartan diet and beating and medical neglect are common. These carceral facilities, where a majority of the individuals caught up in the state of exception have been sent, have been the site of hundreds of deaths from violence and lack of medical care. In 2024, Socorro Jur\u00eddico Humanitario\u00a0reported\u00a0that of the 235 deaths they had recorded in prisons like Izalco, 94 percent of those who died were not affiliated with any gangs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch,\u00a0\u201ctorture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions\u201d were\u00a0rampant\u00a0in Izalco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alvarado smuggled messages to his family through the U.S. embassy in El Salvador, saying he cried every night and that he could not stomach the food. He told his infant daughter to behave herself, and mentioned he was forced to sleep on the concrete floor in only his boxers. His family would send him food to supplement his nutrition, but he would report often not receiving the goods \u2014 reflecting a common practice in Salvadoran prisons, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal, which found that goods sent to the country\u2019s detention centers are often diverted by prison staff.<\/p>\n
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After the Biden era cool-off period, Democrats are again incensed by \u201cthe\u00a0world\u2019s coolest dictator.\u201d Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen made a personal trip to El Salvador to lay eyes on\u00a0\u00c1brego Garc\u00eda, who was a Maryland resident, and the party has lambasted the cruelty of so-called \u201cthird-country\u201d deportations under Trump. Some have been pursuing their efforts since Biden was in power: In November 2023, a group of Democratic congress members\u00a0petitioned\u00a0the State Department to determine how many Americans had been detained under El Salvador\u2019s state of exception. It remains unclear if they received a response.<\/p>\n
Bukele, meanwhile, again\u00a0renewed\u00a0the decree in August that allows his government to detain those captured under the state of exception without trial. The tentative date for those hearings was pushed back to 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just four months into his incarceration, Alvarado became so ill that he was transferred to the Granja Penitenciaria de Rehabilitaci\u00f3n de Zacatecoluca, a lower security facility just a 15-minute drive from CECOT. Since then, he\u2019s been moved multiple times, most recently to the Centro Industrial de Cumplimiento de Penas y Rehabilitaci\u00f3n, where the state holds many political and foreign prisoners. Primarily, the facility is a work camp for detainees who are considered free of any gang associations.<\/p>\n
The post An American Citizen Has Been Stuck in El Salvador\u2019s Prison System Since the Biden Administration appeared first on The Intercept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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