A mass trial of 486 alleged members of El Salvador’s most notorious gang, the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, got underway in the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, on April 21.
It is the biggest trial since Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele enacted emergency powers to take on the country’s organized crime groups.
The indictment includes more than 47,000 charges, including homicide, femicide, extortion, and arms trafficking, which were allegedly committed between 2012 and 2022.
MS-13 was designated as a terrorist organization in February 2025—along with Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and several Mexico-based drug cartels—by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Bukele’s government declared a state of emergency on March 27, 2022, to combat a wave of gang violence that left 87 people dead in one weekend.
The state of emergency—which suspended constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly, and allowed suspects to be held for longer without being charged—has been renewed 49 times, and more than 91,500 people have been detained.
The 486 defendants in the trial, which began on April 21, are being held across five prisons, including CECOT, a maximum-security prison opened by the Bukele administration in 2023.
In March 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited El Salvador.
In a video, using CECOT as a backdrop, Noem warned gang members against operating in the United States.
Prosecutors Seek Maximum Penalty
The Salvadoran prosecutor’s office has presented autopsies, ballistic evidence, and witness testimony, and is seeking the maximum penalty in all 486 cases.
Each defendant could face up to 245 years in prison.
Among those on trial are allegedly long-time leaders of MS-13 who took part in a two-year truce—which ended in 2014—during Mauricio Funes’ presidency.
Funes is a former member of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, a leftist party born of El Salvador’s civil war, and a powerful national political force for three decades that was left with no seats in the Congress after the 2024 election.
Funes was convicted of corruption and other offenses linked to the truce with the MS-13.
In July 2023, El Salvador’s Congress passed legislation that allowed courts to try accused gang members in mass trials.
The legislation also increases prison time for those found to be gang leaders from 45 years to 60 years.
‘Violating Due Process’
Johnny Wright Sol, from the Nuestro Tiempo party, said at the time he was opposed to mass trials.
“Doing these kinds of mass convictions just as they’ve done with captures is violating due process and violating the individual rights of all those accused,” Wright Sol said.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said in an April 21 statement that it “remains very concerned about the impact on human rights of the excessive, unwarranted extension of the state of emergency regime in El Salvador.”
The commission, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), noted that the state “must at all times ensure due process and the judicial guarantees that are essential to protect the rights to life and personal integrity.”
Bukele’s government has said the gang crackdown under emergency powers pushed the homicide rate down last year to 1.3 per 100,000 people from 7.8 in 2022.
The U.S. State Department stated in a fact sheet published in February 2025 that “MS-13 has conducted numerous violent attacks, including assassination and the use of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and drones, against El Salvador government officials and facilities.”
“Additionally, MS-13 uses public displays of violence to intimidate civilian populations to obtain and control territory and manipulate the electoral process in El Salvador,” the State Department added.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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