“If you analyse the situation here, they were the ones who had our society captive.” Belarmino Garcia is the director of CECOT maximum security prison. Housing up to 40,000 inmates, CECOT is the centrepiece of President Nayib Bukele’s iron fist approach to gangs, showing little mercy to its inhabitants. “There are no family visits. They only see people when people like you come with cameras.” Many have praised President Bukele’s ‘state of exception’, which has seen him suspend constitutional rights to arrest over 80,000 suspected gang affiliates. However, it has also swept up many thousands of civilians who claim to be innocent, including Alfredo Mejia’s 22 year old daughter, Carlita, who was arrested for not carrying identification. Critics including Mejia claim that Bukele’s tactics are tearing ordinary families apart. “They were not detaining people for a crime, but for a quota.”