Overview

• On June 29, President Nayib Bukele mocked a Willy Chavarría runway at Paris Fashion Week that featured kneeling, white-clad models evoking inmates at his Cecot high-security prison.
• He sarcastically offered to export Salvadoran detainees to France “as soon as” he receives authorization from the French government to underscore his hardline security agenda.
• Bukele reposted a tourist’s video on X in which a visitor recounts street harassment in Paris and framed it as evidence of Western crime leniency.
• Since March 2022, his state of emergency has allowed warrantless arrests of some 86,000 people and the incarceration of suspected gang members in Cecot, including 252 Venezuelans expelled from the United States.
• He cites a drop in homicides to 2.41 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023 to defend his measures, despite legal challenges and criticism from Amnesty International and WOLA over human rights abuses.