In the bedroom of Rosalina González’s youngest son, detained in February 2025, a toy monkey hangs next to a drawing made by his six-year-old daughter | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
Pregnant women, babies and children are being swept up in the mass arrests ordered under Bukele’s ‘state of emergency’
Rosalina González’s granddaughter is nine months old. Every day of her short life has been spent in Izalco penitentiary in Sonsonate, the maximum-security prison in western El Salvador notorious for its documented history of torture and abuse.
The child was born in the prison after her already pregnant mother was detained on 19 February 2025, alongside her father and uncle, González’s sons. That night, González remembers being awoken at her home in Chilamates, in rural north-west El Salvador, by police who accused her family of unlawful association with gang members and took them away.
The charge is often used to imprison people under the state of emergency introduced in March 2022 by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who once described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”.
The state of emergency has suspended key constitutional rights in a purported effort to dismantle the criminal networks that wielded substantial power in El Salvador at the time. Human rights organisations say it has fuelled a startling democratic backslide, as well as arbitrary detentions and deaths in custody. Yet Bukele has an approval rating of 94%, which he attributes to the country’s falling homicide rate, which has gone from one of the highest in Latin America to the lowest in the region amid draconian policies and pacts his government has quietly made with gang leaders.
After more than a year in detention, González’s sons and daughter-in-law have still not been convicted of any crime. Yet like many of the more than 90,000 people who have been imprisoned under the state of emergency, they have been denied all contact with the outside world.
Today, González fiercely defends her family’s innocence. “My sons were working men,” the 59-year-old told openDemocracy. “My kids are honest… I could leave money here on this table and they would not touch it.”
Although she has reported their detention to the Public Prosecutor for Human Rights, no progress has been made on their case.
“I ask myself: what did the baby do?” says Sylvia Portillo, the mother-in-law of Gonzalez’s youngest son, the uncle of the child born in prison. “The babies have nothing to do with anything.”
Rosalina González, 59, whose 9-month-old granddaughter was born in Izalco prison and remains in custody to this day. Her two sons and daughter-in-law (the baby’s mother) are also in prison | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
Children with life sentences
It is not just those born behind bars who are growing up in El Salvador’s prisons.
More than 3,000 under-18s were detained between March 2022 and July 2024, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Some of those children have described being tortured and abused whilst in custody.
Last month, new reforms came into effect that give judges the power to hand out life sentences to children as young as 12 who are convicted of crimes including homicide, femicide, rape and gang membership. Gang association sentences were previously capped at ten years for children aged 15 and under, and 20 years for adolescents aged 16 to 18.
The reforms have sparked “deep concern” from UNICEF and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which, in a joint statement, accused El Salvador of “a contradiction of the standards enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
Defence lawyer Lucrecia Landaverde believes many of the children being arrested were never involved with gangs. “It is very likely that innocent children will end up with life sentences,” she said, explaining that El Salvador’s judicial system is heavily stacked against defendants.
Many people are found guilty based only on the testimony of a police officer or “co-operating witness” – a convicted gang member offered a reduced sentence for testifying for the prosecution. “The reward consists of reducing their sentence or even pardoning their crimes in exchange for helping to testify and point the finger at everyone, regardless of whether they are making it all up,” Landaverde said. “The criminal protects himself and his own family, and starts accusing people he doesn’t even know.”
This testimony is rarely scrutinised adequately, she added, saying a judge once called for her arrest in open court for cross-examining a prosecution witness.
Landaverde vividly remembers the early days of the state of emergency, when “mass arrests were carried out without any oversight”, she said. “[Our office] looked like a health clinic, packed around the clock with people crying in the waiting room because their young children had been arrested.”
She told openDemocracy how a 13-year-old boy was detained after refusing to share his fried chicken with police officers. “They arrested him, took the chicken, put him in prison and charged him with unlawful association,” she said, “then they ate the chicken.”
Some in El Salvador view the reforms that hand life sentences to children as part of Bukele’s continued crackdown on freedom of expression. “This is a message to young people that no one can oppose the regime, that no one can speak out here,” Samuel Ramírez, the founder of Salvadoran human rights organisation MOVIR, told openDemocracy.
Meanwhile, it is not known how many infants and young children are living in prisons after being born there.
“We have cases of children who have been born in prison, whose mothers were arrested while pregnant. There are other children who have died from a lack of medical care in prison,” Ramírez said. “No matter how much the family or the grandmother asked for them to be returned, they were never returned.”
At least four babies who were born in prisons in the country were confirmed to have died due to poor conditions and limited medical care last year, with causes of death including pneumonia and liver failure. There are also “reports of additional deaths of pregnant women and newborns, including stillbirths resulting from the denial of care”, according to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In February, the committee expressed grave concern over the conditions for pregnant women in El Salvador’s prison system, highlighting a lack of adequate prenatal and postnatal care, as well as an environment unfit for detained children.
openDemocracy asked the Salvadoran presidency about abuses of rights under the state of emergency, criticism of the detention of babies and children, and the imposition of life imprisonment on children as young as 12. The government did not respond.
‘We’re dying inside’
Today, Rosalina González lives in the shell of the home that her sons were building for the family when they were arrested. With no one to continue construction, the front room is still without a roof.
Standing in the bedroom of her youngest son, she carefully removes a few of his belongings from a plastic bag and lines them up on the bed. His photograph is pinned on one wall, alongside a collection of children’s toys and drawings made by his six-year-old daughter, who lives with her other grandma, Sylvia Portillo, and has never met her baby cousin.
Rosalina’s 6-year-old granddaughter runs through her grandmother’s house. Her two sons were still building the house when they were arrested | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
“Every time I’d put my hat on, he would take it off me again,” says the child, laughing as she remembers her father. “It was like a game.”
She skids across the dirt floor of the roofless main room, skipping giddily between stripes of shade and sunlight. A pink folding fan flashes in one hand. Dancing tip-toe across the dust, she uses it to conceal her face from an imagined audience.
Inside, her grandmother repacks her father’s belongings and places them out of sight. González spends much of her time alone these days, denied contact with her detained sons and daughter-in-law. “You feel like you’re dying inside,” she says. “They destroyed my life. They destroyed my children’s lives.”
Euan Wallace is a freelance journalist and photographer. His work focuses on human rights and the climate crisis across Latin America. He is currently based in Bogotá, Colombia.
Martina Mariano is a freelance journalist and aspiring anthropologist, based in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work focuses on human rights and migration.
US President Donald Trump, seen through a viewfinder, speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit, January 13, 2026
With the illegitimate partition of Palestine, and inflicting ongoing terror on Palestinians, Israel and the US continue to smash down the basic principles of democracy
…
With Trump briefing his army that the future war and enemy is internal, ICE must surely be taking lessons from the IDF as to how one controls and intimidates a local population. The road checks, walls, settler violence and attacks, shootings, mass arrests and taking prisoners are a template that is being transferred to the US.
Regarding the local population as the enemy, defining them as terrorist is a well-worn tactic. In 1954, Israel passed A Prevention of Infiltration Law. Its effect was to criminalise those Palestinians who had been made refugees during the Nakba if they sought to return to their homes and land. Pass a law to make citizens aliens or define drug dealers and protesters as terrorists — then the normal rule of law does not apply. Indeed, there are no rules, anyone or anything can be defined as illegal. Just label it terrorist.
It is easy to take the parallels too far. In this neoliberal global war, the US does not need lessons in violence and aggression. It, too, is born on the back of settler colonialism and genocide, has a culture of guns and violence. But the strength of Israel as a 20th-century exemplar of what can be done without recrimination is evident.
This is not some historical precedent from before civilisation and enlightenment when everyone did abhorrent things. After the horrors of the second world war, “never again” was not just about the Holocaust, it was meant to bring about settling issues between states without recourse to war. Setting red lines of international law not to be crossed.
But Israel has crossed them time and again; relegitimised genocide, made it an acceptable tactic to kill tens of thousands of women and children deliberately, starve a population and create a famine, flatten a country and commit ecocide while destroying its health, education and water systems. No wonder Trump and Netanyahu get on most of the time — they are creating a new world order based on fascist means, morals and tactics.
It is not necessary to do historic comparisons. It is not the salutes they make nor the language they use — it is the ideology they share. Authoritarian, opposing equality, individual and collective rights while celebrating violence, embracing paramilitarism and seeking to expand territory using threats of armed conflict to underpin economic bullying. All classic traits of fascism in the making.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.The original Fascists Mussolini and HitlerOrcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
The government has come under pressure to justify the detention of 532 people arrested over the weekend under the Terrorism Act. Photograph: Jaimi Joy/Reuters
Huda Ammori says No 10’s allegations go against its own intelligence assessments, as pressure grows over mass arrests
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The number of people arrested for peaceful protests, together with the images of older people being led away and the demands placed on the criminal justice system, have led many to call into question the criminalisation of so many people.
On Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson responded by saying Palestine Action, which last month became the first direct action protest group to be banned, was “a violent organisation that has committed violence, significant injury, extensive criminal damage”.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told the BBC that Palestine Action “is not a non-violent organisation” and claimed that court restrictions meant people “don’t know the full nature of this organisation”.
Palestine Action co-founders Richard Barnard and Huda Ammori. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images
But Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said: “Yvette Cooper and No 10’s claim that Palestine Action is a violent organisation is false and defamatory and even disproven by the government’s own intelligence assessment of Palestine Action’s activities …
“It was revealed in court during my ongoing legal challenge to the ban that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre’s (JTAC’S) assessment acknowledges that ‘Palestine Action does not advocate for violence against persons’ and that the ‘majority’ of its activities ‘would not be classified as terrorism’.
“Spraying red paint on war planes is not terrorism. Disrupting Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, by trespassing on their sites in Britain is not terrorism. It is the Israeli Defense Forces and all those who arm and enable their war crimes who are the terrorists.”
CECOT prison in El Salvador. Photo: Nayib Bukele/X
The alliance between Trump’s expanding deportation campaign and Salvadoran President Bukele’s carceral authoritarianism has major implications for human rights and the future of democracy.
In February 2023, the Salvadoran government released drone footage of thousands of shirtless men with shaved heads, shackled and crouched in tight formation, being herded into a newly built prison called the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism – CECOT.
The high-tech mega-prison was constructed at breakneck speed under the rule of President Nayib Bukele as he declared victory in the so-called “war on gangs” in the country.
Known as the largest prison in the world, CECOT can hold up to 40,000 people. However, plans to expand the mega-prison to double its current capacity (80,000) are already underway, with the US expected to “send enough to fill it,” as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
From state of emergency to state of exception
The year before CECOT’s inauguration, President Nayib Bukele declared a “state of emergency,” suspending constitutional rights like due process, legal defense, and freedom of assembly, and allowing measures like mass arrests, and indefinite pretrial detention.
“CECOT is nothing more than an extermination prison for the poor,” says Marisel Ramírez, a member of the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc, a coalition of Salvadoran trade unions, civil society groups, and political organizations. “The regime invests in mega-prisons instead of health, education, or structural reforms.”
Today, El Salvador’s detention rate has outpaced that of the United States – the former world leader in incarceration by far. 1 in every 57 Salvadorans is now incarcerated, triple the rate of the US.
In March 2025, various human rights organizations in El Salvador, such as Human Rights Institute of the Central American University (IDHUCA); Foundation for the Study and Application of the Law (FESPAD); Passionist Social Service, among others, produced a report compiling documented cases of mistreatment, torture, and the inhumane conditions of detainees over the three years of the “state of exception.” Their findings include:
85,000+ people have been detained by the state during this period
6,889 cases of human rights violations have been filed by human rights organizations
52% of detainees are 19–30 year-old men
265–375 deaths in state custody have been verified by different data agencies
Their report demands the repeal of the “state of exception,” reparations for the families and victims of human rights violations, and independent investigations of all human rights abuses.
Welcome to CECOT
Many of CECOT’s prisoners are denied due process. Visitation is prohibited. Communication with family, friends, and even lawyers is prohibited. Inmates are also completely stripped of privacy. Cells are packed with up to 80 people for 23.5 hours a day. They share metal bunks and an open toilet, under constant surveillance by prison guards. There is no form of education or recreation offered at the facility. Letters and reading material are prohibited. And there are no reports of any inmates being released. CBS News reported El Salvador’s justice minister saying, “the only way out is in a coffin.”
In fact, Google Earth images and videos have recently circulated social media showing a CECOT courtyard that appears to be stained with blood.
CECOT has become a symbol of a global trend towards militarization, mass incarceration, and political repression under the guise of “domestic security.” As Trump’s offshore detention of migrants in CECOT shines an international spotlight on Bukele’s policies, urgent questions are arising:
How far will the US go in utilizing Bukele’s repressive infrastructure for its own agenda?
How did a self-described “dictator” rise to power in El Salvador?
How are communities in El Salvador responding?
CECOT. Photo: CECOT/X
The US – Bukele alliance
While CECOT was built for domestic repression and incarceration, it is now a site of international collaboration between extreme-right-wing governments. Bukele’s prison has been openly endorsed – and now directly funded – by the US government.
On March 15, in an unprecedented move, the Trump administration deported roughly 250 Venezuelan migrants to CECOT prison in El Salvador, ignoring a federal judge’s order to halt the deportations. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 against Venezuelan nationals accused of being part of the gang Tren de Aragua, Trump attempted to pave a “legal” pathway for his policy of mass deportations. Yet a report from CBS News claims that the majority of those deported have no criminal record in the US, and human rights and advocacy groups have rejected any legal basis for Trump’s use of the AEA.
One of the deportees, a Maryland resident and union worker named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has become a central figure in the broader legal and political crisis surrounding Trump and Bukele’s authoritarian alliance.
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Kilmar was born in El Salvador and holds protected status in the US, where he has lived for over 14 years. The Trump administration admitted he was deported in error and the Supreme Court has ordered the US government to facilitate his return. Nevertheless, Trump has defied the order, and Bukele refuses to release Abrego. Recently, Trump has accused Abrego of being part of the Salvadoran gang, MS-13, without evidence or due process.
Since the day CECOT was inaugurated, the government has used social media to promote positive ideas about the prison and Bukele’s iron-grip approach. Far-right politicians and YouTube influencers are regularly welcomed to tour CECOT, posing in front of groups of detainees for their online audiences. However, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen was denied entry to the facility on April 16, when he traveled to El Salvador to advocate for Kilmar’s release.
In the late hours of April 17, the senator was finally able to meet with Abrego off-site from the prison. Kilmar’s wife credited the growing movement for justice for this small win in a statement released by the advocacy group CASA:
“Now I know that my husband is alive…Thank you to everyone, including Senator Van Hollen, my CASA family, all our Union’s, faith leaders and community for continuing this fight for my family to be reunited.”
In a press conference held on April 18 in Dulles International Airport, the Maryland Senator told reporters that the Maryland father is not being held at CECOT but is still being illegally detained in a different Salvadoran prison. “The reason they relented is pretty clear — they were feeling the pressure,” said the senator.
The USD 6 million deal behind CECOT
The use of El Salvador’s prison system to detain migrants with no clear end in sight has faced heavy criticism, especially in the wake of the mistaken deportation and detention of Abrego Garcia.
During his visit to El Salvador, US Senator Van Hollen raised this same question to Vice President Félix Ulloa regarding Abrego Garcia, who said that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador to keep migrants like him at CECOT.
The Trump administration has reportedly agreed to pay El Salvador USD 6 million to house hundreds of migrants deported from the US for up to a year. In Van Hollen’s press conference on April 18, he told reporters that the deal between Trump and Bukele may be for as much as USD 15 million.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and US President Donald Trump at the White House on April 14. Photo: White House/X
“Homegrowns are next”
However, migrants are not the only ones being targeted for deportation to CECOT. During Bukele’s White House visit on April 14, Trump was recorded saying he wants to send US citizens to CECOT too. The “homegrown criminals” are next. “You’ve got to build about five more places,” he said. To which Bukele responded, “we’ve got space.”
Legal experts and human rights organizations have asserted that the offshore detention of US citizens is illegal, but Trump confirmed “We are looking into it, and we want to do it.”
The US – Bukele alliance represents a convergence in the growing international authoritarian trend. But this alliance didn’t emerge overnight. It is the result of a deliberate political project that Bukele has been advancing for years. But to understand how the country got to this point, we have to look back at how Bukele transformed El Salvador into, as he calls it, a dictatorship.
The world’s “coolest dictator”
For years, El Salvador faced one of the highest homicide rates in the world, driven by the extortion practices of gangs, like MS-13 and Barrio 18. Communities were often caught in the crossfire, with widespread insecurity and little trust in state institutions to protect them. Bukele rose to power promising an end to the violence, using harsh anti-gang rhetoric and militarization to gain popular support amid a climate of fear and frustration.
However, according to organizers with the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc, Bukele’s security policy is based on a pact with the gangs – not a war on them. They explain that while the president claims there are 80,000 gang members and terrorists in prison, the National Civil Police only reports the seizure of 4,000 weapons, 20,000 cell phones, and USD 4 million. There have been no arrests of top gang leaders, nor have those who have committed crimes in the US been extradited to that country.
Movement leaders describe Bukele’s rise as one of clear authoritarianism – cloaked in anti-gang rhetoric, backed by the US, and enforced through mass repression. He enjoys popular support “because people perceive improved security, and he has imposed the idea that traditional parties were corrupt and waged a war that led to tragedies.”
Activists also assert that eliminating the left in the country as a political option has been a deliberate goal of Bukele’s “business clan.” They say Bukele has specifically targeted the FMLN, a former guerilla group that led the armed struggle against US-backed dictatorship in the 1980s, and later helped secure key democratic reforms through the Peace Accords.
“The FMLN is a victim of a smear campaign by the regime…whose influence in the state and society has significantly diminished. After governing for 10 years, the FMLN has no presence in the Legislative Assembly and no longer governs any mayoralties,” reads a statement by the Bloc.
Here is a brief timeline of the Bukele’s rise to power from the perspective of movements on the ground:
2019 – Bukele elected president
Breaking with the two dominant parties (ARENA and FMLN), he formed the party Nuevas Ideas, and presented himself as a young, social media savvy reformist.
2020 – Bukele storms Legislative Assembly with military
Flanked by heavily armed soldiers and police, Bukele enters the Legislative Assembly to pressure lawmakers to approve a USD 109 million loan, in order to further militarize his police and soldiers for the “war on gangs.”
International human rights groups condemn the action, while activists draw connections to El Salvador’s history of military dictatorships.
Replacing judges in the Constitutional Court with loyalists, and removing the Attorney General, Bukele gains unchecked control over all three branches of government.
El Salvador becomes the only country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender, despite mass protests.
Bukele’s new court rules that presidential reelection is now legal, ignoring a constitutional ban. Bukele announces his intent to run for reelection in 2024.
Critics argue that a major part of Bukele’s propaganda is the idea that he’s “changing the country,” using symbolic gestures, minor public projects, and some changes to the state like reducing the number of provincial and municipal governments.
2022 – “State of emergency” declared
Following a spike in homicides, Bukele declares a “state of emergency,” suspending constitutional rights, and launching a so-called “war on gangs.”
Mass arrests without warrants begin. Many are detained without evidence or due process. Organizers call the state of emergency a “mechanism of social containment.” They report popular leaders being targeted, generating fear and limiting popular protests.
2023 – CECOT prison unveiled
The 40,000 person-capacity mega-prison is inaugurated with a propaganda blitz displaying prisoners in dehumanizing ways.
Bitcoin investment loses over 50% of its value, costing El Salvador hundreds of millions.
The Bukele family, which owns 12 large companies, monopolizes public procurement and appropriates state resources. The public procurement law is practically repealed, limiting public access to details about government spending and contracts.
2024 – Bukele wins reelection
Despite a constitutional ban on reelection, Bukele runs for president and wins. He is backed by his courts and military, amid a climate of fear and mass imprisonment justified by “domestic security” rhetoric.
The US government supports his illegal reelection.
Political opposition in government has been practically eliminated. 55/60 representatives are from Bukele’s party, NI. 43/44 mayoralities are controlled by NI and its allies. The majority of the population rejects the FMLN and even the traditional, non-governing right parties.
Bukele reverses a landmark ban on metal mining, sparking a nationwide protest movement.
Today, Bukele’s “state of exception” continues indefinitely. Reports of torture, disappearances, and political arrests grow. People’s movements for the freedom of political prisoners, and against the “state of exception” continue to build, the most important of these is the Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc.
Meanwhile, the Salvadoran President is promoting himself worldwide as a model far-right leader and enjoying a lucrative alliance with the US government.
Salvadoran resistance
Dozens of organizations march on May 1, 2024. Photo: Bloque de Resistencia y Rebeldía Popular
The Popular Resistance and Rebellion Bloc is an organization of 35 social organizations from various sectors of society: students, women, peasants, unions, professionals, and more.
Marisel Ramírez, a member and organizer with the Bloc, told Peoples Dispatch: “These organizations came together in January 2021 to denounce the major setbacks we have suffered since the Bukele business clan took office, and to demand an end to the government’s repressive policies.”
Explaining the Bloc’s strategies and tactics, Marisel said that “the organizations that belong to the bloc act according to their own demands, highlighting the serious human rights violations committed under the state of emergency.”
She outlined several fronts of their struggle:
1. Movement of Victims of the State of Emergency (MOVIR)
Families of the detainees mobilize their communities and protest the arbitrary arrests, demanding justice and freedom for their loved ones.
2. Salvadoran Student Force
Students are consistently fighting back against the arrests of university students under the state of exception.
3. Feminist Resistance
Women are organizing and mobilizing around the economic, emotional, and familial impacts of the arbitrary arrests of innocent people, as well as the abuse of power by the military and police.
These forces, Marisel said, “demand ‘sexual favors’ in exchange for ‘benefits’ – not taking people away, expediting judicial processes, and access to personal hygiene products.”
4. The Confederation of Salvadoran Agrarian Reform Federations (CONFRAS)
Mobilizes peasants and farm workers and denounces the shortage of agricultural labor caused by the high migration triggered by the state of exception.
Despite Bukele’s iron-grip approach and mass incarceration campaign, resistance in El Salvador is growing – led by families of the detained and disappeared, student organizers, feminist collectives, and peasant unions who refuse to be silenced. Their struggle aims to demonstrate that CECOT is not just a prison – it is a weapon of political power aimed at the poor and fueled by international complicity.
What’s becoming increasingly clear is that the US is seeking to expand its deportation machine and outsource incarceration and repression to third countries like El Salvador. As these transnational policies develop, urgent questions remain: How far will Trump go in bulldozing any legal barriers to utilizing this repressive model? Will US citizens begin facing deportation and detention in CECOT? How will the people in the US respond to this deepening authoritarian alliance?
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Image of the original Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
A Youth Demand welcome talk and a number of houses were raided last night and this morning. Nine people, including one attending their first meeting and a journalist were arrested.
Over 30 Metropolitan Police officers raided the Youth Demand Welcome Talk at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster at 7.30p.m. yesterday. Six arrests were made including one attending their first ever welcome talk and a journalist. Three people were released in the early hours of the morning while three remain in custody. Police said that the arrests were for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
In a separate incident at around 8:00a.m. this morning Youth Demand supporter Eddie Whittingham was arrested at his house in Exeter but was released without charge. Two other supporters were arrested at unknown locations. The situation is ongoing.
The Welcome Talk is an opportunity to share information about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and about the mass killing that is being imposed on vulnerable people across the globe as a result of the accelerating climate crisis. It is also an opportunity to share plans for non-violent civil resistance actions to take place in April.
One of those arrested last night and released this morning was Ella Grace-Taylor, 20, an actor musician student said:
“At this point, it couldn’t be clearer that we are in a police state. Our politicians will stand by as police engage in mass arrests and imprisonment of anyone who speaks out against the government for being responsible for genocide. By arming Israel and refusing to call what is happening a genocide, they are perpetrating mass slaughter. Hundreds of children were killed in Palestine in the last week. We won’t stop saying it. We won’t be intimidated.”
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
“It’s clear that the government sees Youth Demand as a threat. They know that we are right. There are thousands of young people who are horrified by what the government is doing to facilitate genocide and who know that they have been betrayed as their future is fucked. We will not be silenced. Young people all over the country are coming together to shut London down day after day throughout April. Sign up for action at youthdemand.org “
Youth Demand campaign on the climate crisis and Israeli genocide.
US President Donald Trump, seen through a viewfinder, speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit, January 13, 2026
