Nearly 10,000 soldiers and police were deployed at dawn Saturday around Soyapango on the outskirts of San Salvador as part of the war against gangs started by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in March.
“From now on, the community of Soyapango is completely surrounded. 8,500 soldiers and 1,500 agents have surrounded the city of 242,000 people east of the capital, President Bukele wrote on his Twitter account.
The president announced on November 23 that cities would be surrounded so the military could search houses one by one and arrest gang members. Soyapango is the first city to use this method.
From daybreak, soldiers and police officers were stationed on all access roads to the city, forbidding anyone to enter or leave the city without being checked. Security forces are responsible for arresting “any gang members who are still there” one by one, President Bukele said.
arrests
Hours after the operation began, Salvadoran Justice and Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro announced that “twelve gang members have already been arrested, all with criminal records.”
Military and police vehicles roamed the streets while drones hovered over the area looking for gang members. Forty “checkpoints” have been set up in the municipality of Soyapango, said Salvadoran Defense Minister René Merino.
“It surprised us, they ask us for our ID to verify our home, but it’s fine, it’s for our safety,” one resident, Guadalupe Perez, 53, told AFP.
The police also stop the buses to check every passenger.
“Citizens have nothing to fear and can continue their activities in peace,” President Bukele assured. This operation is aimed at criminals and not at honest citizens”.
Surrounding cities to “extract” gang members from them is part of the government’s security plan. “People see that the measures taken are having an effect,” argued criminologist Ricardo Sosa, adding, “It is not surprising that they support these operations mainly because they themselves have suffered at the hands of the gangs”.
Supporting Salvadorans
According to a Central American University (UCA) poll, 75.9% of Salvadorans support the state of emergency and 9 in 10 believe crime has gone down.
Some 58,000 suspected members of criminal gangs, the dreaded “maras,” have been arrested in El Salvador since President Bukele declared “war” on these gangs terrorizing the country in late March.
To cope with the onslaught of inmates, the prison authorities pledged to build a gigantic prison for 40,000 suspected criminals in Tecoluca, a rural region in the center of the country.
Soyapango has been considered an unsafe town for years due to the presence of gangs. But the measures taken by Bukele’s government have resulted in “a huge improvement in security,” Mayor Nercy Montano said earlier this week.
The state of emergency, introduced at the end of March after a wave of 87 attacks attributed to the “maras”, allows arrests without warrants, prompting criticism from human rights organizations.
It was extended by Congress until mid-December.