The president seized 1% of El Salvador's population. Their children pay the consequences

El Salvador’s social services agency says more than 40,000 children have had one parent or both detained in President Nayib Bukele’s nearly two-year war on gangs

SANTA ANA, El Salvador -- Tears welled in Alex's eyes and he pressed his head into his hands as he thought about more than a year of birthdays and holidays without his mother, who was swept up by El Salvador's police as she walked to work in a clothing factory.

“I feel very alone,” the 10-year-old said last month as he sat next to his 8-year-old brother and their grandmother. “I’m scared, feeling like they could come and they could take away someone else in my family.”

Forty thousand children have seen one parent or both detained in President Nayib Bukele’s nearly two-year war on El Salvador’s gangs, according to the national social services agency. The records were shared with The Associated Press by an official with the National Council on Children and Adolescents, who insisted on anonymity due to fear of government reprisal against those violating its tight control of information. The official said many more children have jailed parents but aren't in the records.

By arresting more than 1% of his country's population, Bukele, who appears headed to a second five-year term, is trying to break the chain of violence that has ravaged El Salvador for decades. But many worry that debilitating poverty, long-term trauma and government failures to protect their children could instead fuel a future wave of gang warfare.

“Kids aren’t spared when their dad, brother or mom is detained, they carry this trauma with them,” Nancy Fajardo, a lawyer and aid provider working with 150 such families. “They feel as if the president has robbed them of their family … It could push the kids to later join a gang as a form of vengeance for everything they’re suffering.”