Police in El Salvador arbitrarily arrested two human rights defenders who were peacefully protesting a mass eviction and have been holding them in pretrial detention since the end of May 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has reviewed videos and court documents that indicate that the arrests were arbitrary and the charges unfounded.
The police arrested José Ángel Pérez, a 55-year-old pastor and community leader, and Alejandro Antonio Henríquez, a 29-year-old lawyer and environmental defender, who were demonstrating peacefully against the eviction of dozens of families from the El Bosque community, a community in Santa Tecla district, near San Salvador. The authorities charged them with "aggressive resistance" and "public disorder" and sent them to pretrial detention.
"The evidence we reviewed shows that these community leaders were detained simply for exercising their right to peaceful assembly," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "When authorities treat peaceful protest as a crime, the message to all Salvadorans is unmistakably that they should stay silent or risk prison."
Prosecutors have charged both Pérez and Henríquez with "aggressive resistance," defined under Salvadoran law as using "means of violence, intimidation or threats" to interfere with police or judicial actions, and "public disorder," a crime that requires obstructing public roads or access to them, impeding free movement, or invading installations or buildings. Sentences for these crimes range from two to six years in prison.
On May 12, dozens of members of the El Bosque community gathered near the residential neighborhood in which President Nayib Bukele lives to protest an eviction order that threatened to displace about 300 families from their homes in the neighboring Santa Tecla district. The court that had issued the eviction order revoked it three days later.
Human Rights Watch reviewed 16 videos recorded before, during, and after the protest and Pérez's arrest, as well as photographs, social media posts, and court documents. Video footage shows community members peacefully gathered in a large, park-like median in the middle of the C-A4 highway. The footage also shows that Pérez did not engage in violent, intimidating, or threatening behavior when he was detained, as prosecutors allege.
One video shows Pérez and Henríquez calmly speaking with police officers, when one officer grabs Henríquez by his backpack and pulls him away while anti-riot police close in on demonstrators. Police officers then seize Pérez and escort him to a police truck. Despite the footage showing Henríquez, Pérez, and other demonstrators behaving peacefully, prosecutors claimed that Pérez's arrest was necessary to prevent "inevitable" and "aggressive actions" by demonstrators, court documents say.
Police arrested Henríquez the next day in San Salvador, outside of his workplace. Prosecutors claimed he ignored police orders to "stop." Court documents include no evidence that Henríquez engaged in threats, intimidation, or violence, a requisite for the crime of "aggressive resistance" under Salvadoran law.
Prosecutors also charged Pérez and Henríquez with "public disorder," saying that they "obstructed access to public roads." However, court documents show that prosecutors did not present evidence to substantiate this claim. Instead, they cited an interview with a private security guard who said he started to close the entrances and exits to the residential neighborhood after the protests became disorderly at about 10 p.m., an hour after Pérez was arrested.
Prosecutors also cited a report by the vice ministry for transportation that claimed that the protest posed "a latent and potential risk" of obstruction due to its "nature and scale," but did not describe any actual traffic obstruction.
Human Rights Watch reviewed multiple videos that show traffic flowing freely on either side of the median shortly prior to the arrests. One video, taken about 40 minutes before Pérez's arrest, shows police blocking traffic for about 30 seconds so that some protesters could retrieve water and food from a car.
The failure of prosecutors to present evidence that could substantiate the crimes charged indicates that officials are in reality seeking to punish Pérez and Henríquez for their role in organizing and leading this peaceful protest, Human Rights Watch said.
In charging Henríquez, prosecutors said that he was "identified by witnesses as the person who advised the organization of the demonstrations." Prosecutors also claimed that, as a lawyer, Henríquez knew that "the mechanisms to challenge a judicial ruling are not through a protest, much less through a protest held outside the private residence of a public official who has no connection with the judiciary."
After a hearing on May 30, a judge ordered that Pérez and Henríquez should be placed in pretrial detention and sent to holding cells at a police station in Colón district in the department of La Libertad. Over a week later, they were transferred to La Esperanza prison, commonly known as Mariona, where they have had no contact with their family or lawyers. Human Rights Watch has documented inhumane conditions in La Esperanza and other prisons in El Salvador, including detainees being held incommunicado for months and years, lack of access to adequate food, water, and health care, and torture and ill-treatment.
On May 13, President Bukele said, without presenting any evidence, that the demonstrators had been "manipulated" by "so-called leftist groups and NGOs." He announced he was sending the Legislative Assembly a bill that would tax international funding received by civil society organizations at 30 percent. The Assembly, controlled by Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party, passed that "Foreign Agents Law" on May 20.
Under the law and its implementing regulation, published in June, any individual or organization in El Salvador that receives, directly or indirectly, funds, goods, or services of foreign origin must register as a "foreign agent" with the Registry of Foreign Agents, a new Interior Ministry department. The registry has broad discretion to grant exemptions under vague criteria and to sanction activities it considers contrary to "public order" or that "threaten the social and political stability of the country."
The arrests and the Foreign Agents Law are part of a broader crackdown on critics.
In May, authorities arrested Ruth López, director of Anti-Corruption and Justice at Cristosal, one of the country's leading human rights organizations, and Enrique Anaya, a lawyer. Both are being held incommunicado, while their proceedings remain under seal.
Judges overseeing these cases should ensure that hearings are public and that defendants are able to communicate with family members and lawyers, Human Rights Watch said.
El Salvador is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, which prohibit restrictions on peaceful assembly other than those "necessary in a democratic society" to protect a narrow range of important interests including public order, public safety, and the rights of others.
"Foreign governments and international organizations should step up their condemnations of abuses in El Salvador and press the Bukele administration to drop unsubstantiated charges against human rights defenders," Goebertus said.
