SISIGUAYO, EL SALVADOR — On the morning that Walber Rodriguez was arrested last May, he was just two minutes from his home in Sisiguayo, El Salvador.

Walber and his wife Estefany had worked the overnight shift at the shrimp cooperative, and then taken their six-year-old daughter Michelle to visit a relative. Walber was driving the family motorcycle, and Estefany and Michelle sat behind him. They were headed home.

Walber was pulled over at "El Ceibo," a gathering place in Sisiguayo that's marked by a sturdy tree with an abundant canopy. Soon, Walber's sister, mother, and father had arrived, trying to reason with the officer, who knew them by name. They didn't understand why Walber was being handcuffed. 

Sisiguayo was a place that saw police and soldiers as allies. Back in 2015, when the MS-13 gang descended on the hamlet looking to recruit local teenagers, the cops had come down hard, even murdering some of the gang members, and Walber and his neighbors had raised money to build a new police station. 

Now, backup was arriving for the officer. Two navy soldiers showed up, including one who had been with Walber just the night before, watching a soccer game, and informed the others that Walber was "a working man." A patrol vehicle full of additional cops followed. No one named anything that Walber had done wrong. Yet the family's pleas didn't work. "Look," said the officer who led Walber off, flipping his wrist to the sky, "this comes from above." 

Within days of Walber's arrest, the Rodriguezes learned he was being accused of belonging to MS-13. 

Scenes like this have been playing out across El Salvador since March, when President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of exception" and suspended certain constitutional rights, ostensibly to deal with MS-13 and two offshoots of the rival Barrio 18 gang, Barrio 18 Sureños and Barrio 18 Revolucionarios — all of which have terrorized El Salvador and made it one of the world's most violent places not at war. 

The declaration was meant to be temporary, lasting 30 days, but Bukele's administration has renewed it nine times. More than 60,000 people, mostly working-age men, have been arrested, while signs along roadways feature cinematic images of heavily-armed police ridding the country of "terrorists." 

Just as commercial fishermen trawl their way through columns of water to maximize their catch, Salvadoran authorities have rounded people up indiscriminately and with flimsy explanations.

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