Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

I came across this article[1] the other day, after reading about the US sending people to a prison in El Salvador and wondering what we actually know about the place.

An incongruity that I didn't notice at the time but realized a bit later is that the prison is called "The Center for Terrorism Confinement" and it has a capacity of 40,000 people. Why would El Salvador or any country need a terrorist detention facility that holds 40,000 people?

According to wikipedia, El Salvador has a population of about 6 million.

The United States famously kept people accused of terrorism charges at Guantanamo Bay, and 780 prisoners have been kept there over the last couple decades since GWB established the prison. There are currently 15.

Presumably there are a lot more people who would fit the description "domestic terrorist" being held in jails in mainland US, but certainly not 40,000 of them.

Presumably president Bukele's administration is using it as a detention facility for regular criminals as well, but it wouldn't be surprising if there's a lot of people there that shouldn't be in jail in the first place.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/americas/el-salvador-prison-t...

The drug cartels are viewed as terroristic activity, so yes, there are a lot of terrorists in El salvador by that perspective. Shouldn't be too surprising when cartels commit outrageous acts like the Mejicanos massacre

Yeah anyone criticizing the mass incarceration in El Salvador as unjust should really familiarize themselves with the crimes of the gangs down there. The obliteration of a social scourge in a single presidency was nothing short of miraculous. That's why Bukele was re-elected at the highest levels in history - his people genuinely love him for it. The right to a fair trial is great in places that have law and order, but when you witness beheadings, mass executions, torture, etc. daily, you won't miss that right at all.

As someone who generally opposes Bukele on an ideological level, I'm not even that mad about the mass sweeps themselves. The way things were going before, it was obvious a drastic solution was needed.

It's the CECOT conditions and the boasting about cruel treatment that I'm unhappy about. At this point it's plain torture, and I believe it's wrong to torture people, even if those people are themselves torturers or worse.

I think anyone who is innocent but in jail probably misses the right to a fair trial.

> you won't miss that right at all.

Until the day the goons break down your door and drag you away. Then you'll wish you had a fair trial. "It'll never happen to me if I keep may head down" will ensure no one will feel safe about publicly opposing the president on any issue.

Your dictator is not special, most of them concentrate their power by claiming to address an issue that's legitimately concerns a lot of citizens; Idi Amin expelled Asians under cover of addressing inequality.

That fails to understand how power in exceptional situations persists: namely that it still must be supported by key stakeholders.

If a leader were to summarily arrest large numbers of random citizens, suddenly they'd lose the support of citizens, one of the key pillars keeping them in power.

Which is why you see empowered and pervasive secret police institutions in societies like this -- you require a credible and effective alternative to popular support.

Exactly, this is analogous to "sensitivity/specificity" of a test, the test is if they can be trusted to live autonomously in society

- most sensitive: arrest everyone you suspect, lots of innocents locked up - trade-off : some innocents locked up - most specific: arrest only people you are 100% sure are criminals, lots of them get let off due to lack of evidence / inability to prove

You can frame it as a moral question, lock up 100% of criminals and 1 innocent person, or 0 innocent people and only 50% of criminals.

There is a separate, more subjective argument that knowingly locking up innocents is a slippery slope that will lead to a corrupt state.

From a pure ethics standpoint, this is "fruit from the poisoned tree" i.e. doing something unethical to achieve positive result, in this case, locking up an innocent to cause crime to plummet.

One thing is for sure, if he went back up for election and got in through strong popular support, the society replied and said they support living in such an environment. If more innocents are locked up maybe the feedback would change.

> That fails to understand how power in exceptional situations persists

I was describing how dictators concentrate power to themselves using reasonable-sounding pretexts during the initial stages of self-coups, not how the regimes use the acquired powers to self-sustain.

> ...suddenly they'd lose the support of citizens, one of the key pillars keeping them in power.

Dictators, and political incumbents in general don't need support (in a positive, active sense) to go about the business of exercising political power they already wield.

On the flip side, they need a lack of unified opposition to avoid being voted out/toppled, hence dictators lean on corrupting the courts, use the secret police to disappear opposition, and the like. Autocrats will be very happy with a 0.05% approval/99.9% disapproval ratings, as long as their physical security is not threatened by riotous mobs, and their political power unchallenged.

Bukele, who calls himself "the coolest dictator in the world" [0], won his first election in 2019, and his second election in 2024 in landslides. El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world and was basically dominated by brutal cartels. Bukeles solution to this was to use the military to round up everyone who is a suspected gang member. Note that this includes people who simply have too many tattoos or are young male who have relatives related to gangs. They built a mega-prison, aka concentration camp to contain these people, but it seems like it is significantly below capacity, estimated at 16k prisoners while being able to "house" up to 40k people. The conditions in the prison are aweful [1].

It is important to note that his policies seem to be very popular in El Salvador, and other latin american countries are thinking about emulating them. Internal security appears to be much higher now than just a few years ago.

But even if you support extremely harsh and unlawful action against cartels, I would hope that most people see the decision to "rent out" space for foreign "criminals" as a dangerous slippery slope. The government there is now planning to build a similar type of facilities for white collar criminals alleged of corruption, which is a classic in the fascist playbook of wiping out internal opposition. [2]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/26/naybib-bukele-...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/17/americas/el-salvador-pris...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Confinement_Center#I...

What El Salvador did is not new. But they will run into the same problem as every other SA dictatorship that is "tough on crime": the military will become the new cartel.

Did you miss the year of press cycles where this guy took El Salvador from one of the worst crime rates in the Western Hemisphere to one of the best by liberally arresting anyone he thought might be related to crime gangs?

From Wikipedia:

> During his presidency, Bukele enacted tough-on-crime policies that scholars have characterized as successfully reducing gang activity and violent crime at the cost of arbitrary arrest and alleged widespread human rights abuses.

So having a low crime rate is more important than keeping innocent people out of jail?

I would bet it depends on the rate of each happening to the average voter.

According to the voting population of El Salvador, yes.

If society has philosophically nice and clean set of rules that allow brutal gangs to terrorize the citizenry, just how worthwhile are those rules? Maybe the system needs a reboot before they can be worthwhile again.

I assume in this context "low crime" doesn't refer to shoplifting, but to gang violence, murders, kidnappings, and shootings. If you fear about your life daily, you will probably be more willing to accept extreme measures than someone living in a relative comfort and safety.

I didn’t say that, and I even clipped the relevant Wiki article which described the trade-off of law/liberty.

Who, pray tell, publishes the Salvadorian crime rates? Dragnet arresting young men will reduce crime in any country, but that sure is worse than the disease because while that action of arresting innocents is not "illegal" from the regime's perspective, it should be. So "crime" has gone up, and perpetrated by the state against citizens.

>So "crime" has gone up

Just not for regular folks that can walk around their city and not get mugged or shot

Their definition of "terrorists" included drug gangs and such terrorizing people, not so much the political variety

Reply on news.ycombinator.com