Three U.S. citizens of Salvadoran origin have been detained in El Salvador without trial, according to their families and recent reporting. Their cases raise questions for Salvadoran Americans traveling under the country’s continuing State of Exception.
José Martínez had spent most of his life building a future in the United States. He left El Salvador when he was 14, became a U.S. citizen in 2006, and eventually built a life in California with his wife, Patricia González.
He worked in construction. González worked as a kindergarten teacher. After nearly two decades together, they had built the kind of life that made a return to El Salvador seem like a homecoming rather than a risk.
Martínez had always wanted to go back.
In March 2025, he returned to El Salvador to oversee plans to buy land and build a house in the Santa Ana area. Five days after arriving with González for a later visit, that dream turned into a nightmare.
On Nov. 6, 2025, the couple was walking near the San Lorenzo River in Ahuachapán when police officers stopped them and asked for identification. They had left their U.S. passports at home. González showed a Mexican identification card. Martínez presented the Salvadoran identity card, or DUI, he had obtained only days earlier.
The officer noticed a tattoo of three dots on Martínez’s right hand.
According to González, the officer asked whether Martínez knew that the tattoo was prohibited in El Salvador. Martínez said he did not. He explained that the tattoo was not prohibited in the United States.
The situation escalated quickly.
More officers arrived carrying long guns. González said police searched Martínez, his backpack, and the money they were carrying. She tried to call relatives and have their U.S. passports brought to them, but authorities refused to allow it.
She was instructed to drive them to the police station.
Inside, González said she heard officers repeatedly asking her husband who he belonged to and where he was from. Martínez tried to explain that he did not live in El Salvador and had left the country as a teenager.
Then an officer told her that her husband was being accused of terrorism.
González said she feared he was going to be killed.
Before leaving the station, she was allowed to say goodbye. She hugged and kissed her husband.
It was the last time she saw him.
Martínez was transferred to a prison in Santa Ana. Nearly 10 months later, according to González, she has still been unable to speak with him directly.
She now speaks about her husband from their home in Compton.
“If I were Salvadoran, I would also be detained,” González said. “The only mistake my husband made was going to his country, a place he missed so much.”
A U.S. passport did not prevent other Salvadoran Americans from being detained
Martínez’s case is not the only one involving a U.S. citizen of Salvadoran origin.
The cases of three U.S. citizens detained during trips to El Salvador have been reported: Martínez, Nelson Vladimir Hernández Tovar and Walter Josué Huete Alvarado.
Their families say the men were accused of gang involvement based on circumstances including tattoos or what police characterized as suspicious or nervous behavior. None had gone to trial at the time of the reporting.
Hernández, 31, had traveled to El Salvador to visit his girlfriend and spend Christmas there. His father said police initially described his son as suspicious and nervous before authorities allegedly said he was a gang member.
Nelson had become a U.S. citizen in 2018.
His father had brought him to the United States after immigrating in 1997. The two later worked together in construction, and Nelson also wrote rap music.
For his father, the original concern had been that gangs could hurt his son during a visit to El Salvador.
That fear changed.
A tattoo from Los Angeles was interpreted as a gang symbol
Walter Josué Huete Alvarado’s case is particularly relevant to Salvadorans living in California.
Huete Alvarado was born in Los Angeles and held only U.S. citizenship. In 2023, he traveled to El Salvador to accompany his young daughter to a U.S. Embassy appointment.
He was later detained at a party shortly before he was scheduled to return to Los Angeles.
Among the tattoos that drew police attention were the letters “LA,” which his family says referred to Los Angeles, the city where he was born.
Authorities accused him of belonging to MS-13. His family disputed the accusation and said the tattoos did not demonstrate gang membership.
He remained imprisoned without a trial, according to reporting on his case.
His story illustrates a particular vulnerability for Salvadoran Americans who grew up in the United States: tattoos that have an ordinary personal meaning in California can be interpreted very differently by Salvadoran authorities.
The broader issue is El Salvador’s state of exception
The cases come against the backdrop of El Salvador’s state of exception, declared in March 2022 after a surge in gang killings.
The measure remains in effect and has given Salvadoran authorities expanded powers to arrest people suspected of involvement with criminal organizations.
The policy has dramatically reduced violent crime in El Salvador, according to official homicide statistics. At the same time, human rights organizations have documented allegations of arbitrary arrests, inadequate due process and prolonged detention.
The U.S. government has also warned that American citizens can be detained under the state of exception.
That distinction matters for Salvadoran Americans considering a visit.
The issue is not simply whether El Salvador is safer from street crime than it was several years ago. It is also how the country’s extraordinary security measures can affect people who enter the country as visitors, including U.S. citizens.
What does a tattoo mean during a police encounter?
There is no evidence that every person with a tattoo who travels to El Salvador will be arrested.
But the cases of Martínez and Huete Alvarado demonstrate that tattoos have been cited in detention cases involving U.S. citizens.
Human rights organizations have also raised broader concerns about the use of weak or uncorroborated indicators of gang affiliation in arrests.
For a Salvadoran American who left the country decades ago, this creates a complicated reality.
A person may have received a tattoo in California. It may represent a hometown, a family member, initials, a childhood memory or simply personal expression.
Yet in El Salvador, authorities may interpret the same tattoo through the lens of the country’s long-running fight against gangs.
That does not mean that the tattoo itself establishes criminal conduct. It means that, in documented cases, a tattoo has become part of the circumstances surrounding an arrest.
Families are left waiting for answers
Another common element in the three cases is the difficulty families have had communicating directly with their relatives.
The families said they received information through U.S. consular officials rather than through direct telephone calls or regular visits.
In Nelson Hernández’s case, U.S. consular officials periodically visited him and relayed messages to his father in the United States.
For Martínez’s wife, the uncertainty has stretched for months.
His lawyer requested a hearing and sought bail, according to González, but the requests were unsuccessful.
None of the three men had gone to trial at the time of the reporting.
What this means for Salvadoran Americans in California
For the Salvadoran community in California, the cases raise a question that goes beyond one family.
Thousands of Salvadoran Americans maintain close ties to El Salvador. They travel there to visit parents and relatives, attend family celebrations, maintain property or simply return to places they remember from childhood.
Many are U.S. citizens who have spent most of their adult lives in California.
José Martínez was one of them.
He left El Salvador at 14. He became a U.S. citizen. He worked in construction. He married a kindergarten teacher. He lived in Compton.
And he still wanted to go home.
That trip ended with him in a Salvadoran prison.
The U.S. government says Americans traveling abroad are subject to the laws of the country they visit and that consular assistance cannot guarantee someone’s release from detention. Americans arrested or detained abroad can request that authorities notify the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.
For Salvadoran Americans with tattoos, Martínez’s case adds another consideration before making the journey.
The question is not whether having a tattoo automatically makes someone a gang member. It does not.
The question is whether a tattoo can become part of the justification used by authorities to detain someone.
He never made it home.
