We expected to be out of the country for just a few days. We assumed that within a week of publishing, the Salvadoran government would be preoccupied with something else. We planned to assess the risks and then return. We traveled light, with only carry-on bags—no one brought more than ten pairs of underwear.
We had a well-practiced routine for such occasions, which we called “preventive departure,” and it had always worked for us before. For the first time, one of us voiced concern that the government might retaliate severely. But we clung to the idea of “preventive departure,” repeating it to ourselves a week later, then two weeks, and even a month after we realized we couldn’t go back.
The reason for our departure was a series of videos our newspaper, El Faro, was about to release. The first one, titled “Charli’s Confessions: Interview with a Gang Leader on His Secret Pacts with Nayib Bukele,” came out in early May. By then, the journalists who conducted the interviews were scattered across New York, Mexico City, Guatemala City, and Los Angeles.
In El Salvador, the popular dictator Nayib Bukele reigns over social media. Likes, hearts, comments, and views are the currency of his domain. His most-watched YouTube video, showcasing the Cecot megaprison—the only one he wants the world to see—has garnered over 4 million views in two years. The second most-viewed, “Why did we destroy the gravestones of gang members?”, has surpassed 3 million views in the same period. For a country with only about 6 million people, these numbers are massive, and that’s just on his channel. Across social media, Bukele is a powerful brand.
The first video featured an interview with two gang members who had fled the country with help from Bukele’s government. They detailed an eight-year-long pact with the dictator’s inner circle. Within 24 hours, the video had over 326,000 views. Two months later, the three-part series reached 2 million views on YouTube, and excerpts on the newspaper’s other social media accounts were viewed more than 15 million times.
Over the three episodes, totaling 93 minutes, revelations from leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios shattered Bukele’s image as the gangs’ arch-enemy. They claimed his party paid gangs $250,000 to help elect him mayor of the capital from 2015 to 2018, back when he posed as a leftist. The pact continued after he became president, with loopholes allowing gang members to extort and murder without consequences. They also said his government helped them escape the country. (Bukele has publicly denied these allegations and faces no charges.)
Previous reports by El Faro had provided ample evidence supporting the gang members’ claims, but in today’s world, an official document or security camera footage carries less weight than a notorious gang leader confessing on camera. Many people prefer their reality served up like a Netflix series.
Social media is Bukele’s kingdom—he directs his ministers via X and announces major decisions on Facebook Live. The gang members’ confessions briefly took over that kingdom, just over a month after Bukele had accepted more than 200 Venezuelans sent by Donald Trump to his mega-prison. Standing with Trump, Bukele wanted to be seen as the criminals’ nemesis, but the El Faro videos portrayed him as their political ally.
El Salvador president Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office with Donald Trump in April 2025. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Just three hours after publication, the director of Bukele’s State Intelligence Agency…Attorney General Peter Dumas posted on X, accusing us of multiple crimes “linked to gangs, drug trafficking, sexual abuse, human trafficking… You can’t hide forever behind the invisible shield of ‘journalism.'” That same evening, a well-informed source warned us that the attorney general’s office was preparing at least seven arrest warrants for El Faro staff on gang-related charges.
Since March 2022, when President Bukele declared emergency measures and imposed a “state of exception” to combat gangs, due process has been suspended for anyone accused of gang ties. Trials are held in secret, judges are anonymous, and a single trial can involve up to 900 defendants. Preventive detention is indefinite, and evidence is often so weak that arrests are sometimes justified by claiming the person appeared “nervous.”
It seemed we were facing the same fate as tens of thousands of innocent people among the more than 85,000 arrested under this regime: not a public trial, but a life in Bukele’s prisons. As El Faro has reported, torture is systemic there, and several individuals with no criminal records or tattoos have been found dead with signs of torture. Often, the regime’s forensic doctors sanitize autopsies with the vague cause of “death by pulmonary edema,” which is hardly more informative than saying someone died because they stopped living.
Hours after publishing our story, we all regretted how little we had packed. “We’re screwed,” a colleague said in a virtual meeting, capturing the collective mood. But our plan stayed the same: report what happened, alert international organizations, publicly confront the threats, give interviews about our findings, and return.
The Bukele government resorted to its lowest tactics. Dozens of YouTubers and self-proclaimed “political analysts” labeled us as gang members and called for our arrest. The extensive documentation from El Faro, other media, and the U.S. government that supported the gang members’ statements in our interviews no longer mattered. All that mattered was the offense to the ruler.
On our behalf, a lawyer went to the attorney general’s office to request information about the allegations against us. Prosecutors had 15 business days to respond. From the start, we expected those 15 days—and any extensions—to be met with institutional silence. We were right.
A week after publication, seven El Faro journalists remained abroad. “I’ll be back on May 14; I already have my ticket,” one said, and others planned to return around the same time. But as weeks passed, we did not go back, and dozens more journalists and human rights activists joined us in leaving the country.
The idea of returning on May 14 was abandoned within days. Our source continued to insist we would be arrested upon entering El Salvador, and we found no one to contradict this.
For years, finding sources in El Salvador has been challenging. Bukele has openly expressed his hatred for El Faro and other media, and in 2020, he accused us of money laundering on national television. This forced El Faro to move its legal base to Costa Rica, effectively exiling the newspaper. In 2022, we revealed that 22 of our staff had been hacked with Pegasus spyware between June 2020 and November 2021. “If you find Pegasus, you know that person has been hacked by a government,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto’s cybersecurity lab, which found 226 hacks on our devices.
Under Bukele, not only has obtaining sources become more difficult, but it has also become more expensive. What used to…Meeting a source for coffee now requires a full-blown strategy. If we’re inside the country, that means renting apartments and cars for 24 hours so we can meet safely without being tailed. For highly sensitive cases where sources will only talk abroad, we arrange meetings in foreign cities.
Even so, in the days after the videos were published in May, we managed to speak with several sources—police officers, prosecutors, and investigators connected to government institutions. They all told us the same thing: if any arrest warrants existed, only a select few would know, and they had no access to that information.
In El Salvador, the videos continued to dominate social media. Bukele, as usual, responded with a publicity stunt. Five days after our report, on May 5, he announced six days of free public transportation nationwide. He claimed it was due to the closure of the Los Chorros highway, even though the closure affected only a small area.
The first day of free transport was chaos. Dozens of Salvadorans clung to the few buses in service. Images of the overcrowding spread across news outlets and social media. Bukele blamed the transport companies for refusing to operate without a payment guarantee from the state—nothing but a social media post from him. He then turned to his favorite tactic: ordering the arrest of the company owners. The police and prosecutor’s office, loyal tools of the regime, detained 13 businessmen within hours, including two who had come to negotiate at the Presidential House. One of them, 64-year-old José Roberto Jaco, died in custody five days later. His family declined to give details about his death.
On May 12, 300 families from impoverished areas facing eviction gathered outside the walled private compound where Bukele lives. Holding signs and accompanied by children and the elderly, they pleaded with him to stop the evictions. Bukele sent in the military police to break up the protest and arrested five community leaders, including an evangelical pastor and an environmental lawyer. Once again, social media filled with images of crying children and elderly women begging soldiers to release their leaders.
From the gang member interviews, to the transport chaos, to the military crackdown on poor families, Bukele had a terrible month. His social media dominance was broken, and his followers were no longer looking where he wanted them to.
A day later, Bukele set the tone from his X account. Without evidence, he claimed “humble people” had been “manipulated by self-proclaimed leftist groups and globalist NGOs, whose only real goal is to attack the government.” He announced he would send a Foreign Agents Bill to the legislative assembly, imposing a 30% tax on all international donations or payments to organizations or individuals deemed “foreign agents” by his government. A week later, the assembly passed it.
From the outside, we no longer understood anything. We couldn’t make sense of this unique whirlwind of repression. Not only did we not know if we would be punished for publishing the gang interviews, but we would likely now be labeled foreign agents and face fines between $100,000 and $250,000—sums no journalist at El Faro possesses. It was the first time since we left the country that one of our…My colleagues had made it perfectly clear: “We cannot go back to El Salvador.”
On May 18, just after midnight, our newspaper’s group chats lit up with urgent messages: “Ruth López has been arrested.” One reaction in the chat was disbelief: “Shit, it can’t be true!” Minutes earlier, police had forced anti-corruption lawyer Ruth López out of her home. Once outside, they arrested her and made her change out of her pajamas on the street. López recorded the audio on her phone. “Hurry up, put your pants on,” an officer ordered. “Have some decency,” she replied—a phrase that quickly became a rallying cry for the opposition.
López, who with her organization Cristosal has exposed numerous corruption cases in Bukele’s government, remains imprisoned on corruption charges from her time as an adviser to the supreme electoral tribunal. Her trial was kept secret, as was the evidence the prosecution claimed to have.
We and many colleagues saw López’s arrest as an ultimatum from the regime. After a disastrous month, Bukele was no longer tolerating criticism. López was one of the most internationally recognized voices against his government; in 2024, the BBC named her one of the 100 most influential women in the world. In Bukele’s view, there are no activists, journalists, cooperatives, or environmentalists—only opponents. Anyone who disagrees with him is labeled an enemy.
Journalists from other outlets began considering leaving. “I’ve written extensively about this government’s corruption. Should I get out?” asked one journalist from San Salvador in a chat.
By then, some of our colleagues had already decided not to return, while others were determined to go back. Meanwhile, we were preparing the new issue of El Faro’s monthly magazine, titled “Silencing Dissent: The Return of Political Prisoners in El Salvador.” It had only been 20 days since we left.
There were no major developments or new information, but we gave many interviews to international media about our findings. We met with concerned international organizations and were welcomed by embassies in various countries who asked how they could help. We told them we weren’t sure, but that any information about our potential arrest if we returned would be invaluable.
On June 1, marking one year since his unconstitutional re-election, Bukele appeared on national television from the national theater, surrounded by his deputies, loyal magistrates, prosecutors, and soldiers. In an 80-minute speech, he declared that he didn’t care if people called him a dictator and dismissed the country’s independent press as “political activists in it for the money.”
Why did we still insist on returning? It’s hard to say. Maybe it was the lingering excitement of reuniting with colleagues we hadn’t seen in a month, or the dark humor we used to cope. “Can I only come back on the same flight as him?” someone joked about a colleague, and we all laughed. But nothing could hide the seriousness of our situation—the fear for our families and ourselves.The threat of imprisonment without a fair trial and the chilling capture of Ruth López, who vanished for 48 hours without her family’s knowledge, loomed over us. Despite this, the plan was set: seven members of El Faro would depart on Avianca flight 638 at 3:05 PM on Saturday, June 7, landing in El Salvador at 4:35 PM.
On the evening of June 6, we spoke at the Central American Journalism Forum in Costa Rica. The final panel, “Under Fire: How Does Central American Journalism Survive?” wrapped up around 9 PM. Afterwards, a diplomat pulled us aside from the closing cocktail party for a private word.
“I’ve received information from two separate sources that you’ll be arrested at the airport in El Salvador tomorrow,” the diplomat warned. “A police operation is already in place starting tonight. Do not travel.”
The metaphor of a bucket of cold water doesn’t do it justice—it wasn’t bracing; it was crushing. One journalist described it as suddenly feeling heavier, as if a hump had grown on their back. The exhaustion we’d shrugged off in our eagerness to return home came flooding back. We had packed our bags, chosen our seats, and checked countless times that our passports were secure. In our minds, we were already on that plane. Now, we were canceling everything.
No one boarded the flight. Our fragile plan of a “preventive departure” shattered into pieces, leaving only one word to define our new reality. For many of us, it sparked a naive but urgent question: Am I now in exile?
Some of us flew to Guatemala, partly to be closer to home—just a three-hour drive from the border. As days passed, more colleagues from El Faro and other Salvadoran media joined us in Guatemala. Some feared that since the government hadn’t caught those expected on our flight, they might target other journalists. Others had noticed patrols circling their homes or received knocks on their doors. A few got direct warnings from trusted contacts: “Leave your house now; they’re coming for you tonight.”
One night, 25 colleagues from five different Salvadoran news outlets gathered at a house in Guatemala City. We shared what we knew. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” one admitted. “And I doubt anyone else does either. If you figure something out, let the rest of us know—we’re all stumbling in the dark here.”
Nearly two months after publishing the gang interviews, several of us still hesitated to call ourselves exiles. The hope of returning home lingered.
We met at a pub in Guatemala City, a group of Salvadoran journalists sharing our grief and drowning it in beer. The seven from El Faro had come to accept that, for the foreseeable future, our homeland was off-limits—distant and hostile.
One was planning to sell his house to start anew in another country; another ached for his son, counting the moments until he could hold him again; another’s long-term partner left them upon learning they were a target; another wrestled with what to do about a small business in El Salvador that had just begun to thrive. Some just drank their beer.
It was in this state that we learned a veteran journalist, whom we’ll call El Nuevo, was on his way. El Nuevo is a meticulous man. He’d kept a suitcase packed ever since President Bukele boasted in September 2021 about not using tear gas on protesters—”for now.” Yet, on June 7, when warned that police were watching his home, he forgot the suitcase in his rush to escape. Since then, he’d been moving between friends’ homes, keeping his phone off, staying under the radar.He went back home briefly to grab his suitcase and pack a few more items. As he looked around the room, at the bed and the kitchen, he thought, “This is the last time I’ll turn off the stove.” Then he left.
He boarded a bus and departed from El Salvador. “When I crossed the Paz River,” he reflected, “I wondered when I might ever cross it in the opposite direction again.” Upon reaching Guatemala, he learned that some colleagues were having a drink and decided to join them. El Nuevo arrived with the same weary expression the rest of us had worn for weeks—like a boxer struggling to his feet after a knockout. Exile always seems like something that happens to others, in distant lands and times… until it happens to you. He attempted a joke as a greeting: “Now they’re going to accuse me of illicit association.” But he didn’t laugh.
He took a bite of a hamburger, sipped his beer thoughtfully, and said out loud to himself, “It’s tough because you’re convinced that your life and your purpose is to serve there.” He emphasized “there,” not “here.”
Before leaving El Salvador, he had said goodbye to his daughter. Tears welled in his eyes as he remembered her parting words: “I feel like, just in video games, one life has ended for you. I hope the other one works out.” That night, the future felt equally uncertain for all of us.
This article was originally published in The Dial and El Faro English. You can listen to our podcasts here and subscribe to the long read weekly email here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the sensitive topic of being unable to return home after releasing critical reports on a head of state framed in a natural and clear tone
General BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What is this situation about
This refers to a scenario where journalists or researchers published critical reports about the President of El Salvador and now they fear for their safety or face legal threats that prevent them from returning to the country
2 Why cant they just go back home
They may face immediate arrest detention or other forms of retaliation from the government or its supporters due to the content of their reports which were likely highly critical
3 What kind of shocking reports are we talking about
The reports could cover a range of sensitive topics such as allegations of corruption human rights abuses undemocratic practices or connections to criminal organizations
4 Is this a common problem for journalists
Yes unfortunately In many countries with weakening democratic institutions journalists who investigate those in power often face intimidation legal harassment or exile to silence them
5 What should someone do if they find themselves in this situation
The immediate steps are to ensure their physical safety seek legal counsel specializing in international human rights or asylum law and contact organizations like Reporters Without Borders or the Committee to Protect Journalists for support
Advanced Practical Questions
6 What legal grounds could the government use to prevent their return
A government might issue an arrest warrant revoke or not renew their passport or charge them with crimes like spreading false news inciting unrest conspiracy or even treason
7 Could they seek asylum or refugee status in another country
Yes absolutely If they have a wellfounded fear of persecution in their home country due to their work they can apply for asylum in a safe third country
8 What is the longterm impact of being forced into exile
Beyond the obvious personal and emotional toll it can sever their connection to their sources and community hinder their ability to continue reporting effectively on the region and create significant financial and immigration difficulties
9 How can they continue their work from abroad
They can work with international media outlets collaborate with trusted contacts still inside the country while ensuring their
