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The president seized 1% of El Salvador's population. Their children pay the consequences
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A family member shows a phone photo of Juana Guadalupe Recinos, who was detained last year during the government's crackdown on its war against drugs, in Santa Ana, El Salvador, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. Police detained Recinos on a charge of “illegal gathering” as she walked to work leaving her two sons motherless for more than a year. - photo by AP Photo/Salvador Melendez
SANTA ANA, El Salvador (AP) — 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.