The problem, especially in Latin America, is there's a long history of guys taking power, "doing whatever needs to be done to get the bad guys," and then...never giving up power. Usually killing lots of people who might get in their way. Often with full support of backers in the US government.
But surely this time it's different!
To be fair, criminals in El Salvador weren’t getting off on legal technicalities. They were never seeing a court due to police corruption. Bukele had to be extreme because he had to sidestep the police-justice system. That leaves federal police and the military, coarse tools.
I never understood how some parts of US just allow that. I live in a country where we have very poor property protection laws, and police still gets routinely called for underage kids stealing chocolates, actually comes, and a whole procedure is done, including parents, a judge, etc.
Influenced by movies, I always assumed that a shopkeeper in US would just do the cowboy thing (I know i'm exaggerating a bit) and take out the gun and make the thief put the stuff back, or worse. Watching videos of whole gangs of people just coming inside a store, filling their baskets/carts and leaving while noone does anything seemed so surreal. In a rich country, you'd expect property to be protected, but it doesn't seem so. Even in some of the poorest countries in the world, something like this wouldn't happen, because even random people in the street would go out of their way to stop (and beat) a thief, and the police wouldn't be arresting a passerby for tripping an escaping thief or tackling them to the ground, but would focus on the thief.
I mean sure... allowing people to steal offsets the "social security" from the government to retailers, but the safety issue remains.
Most jurisdictions have 'shopkeeper's privilege' and stopping a shoplifter is 100% OK. I think most large businesses don't expect or even allow hourly employees to assume the risk of stopping shoplifters because, to insurers, that math doesn't math. If an employee is required to chase and restrain a shoplifter, there's a good chance they'll get injured, become exposed to the money incinerator that is the US health care system, etc. Maybe the supposed shoplifter didn't actually steal anything, but the employee thought they did and injured them while restraining them. So you could have an injured employee and an innocent injured shopper. Now you're paying multiple six figures for health care claims over a $20 steak that wasn't stolen.
The end result is a lot of good people’s lives are inconvenienced for the sake of protecting the rights of these bastards.
Flip the script, strip them of rights and throw them in a prison with no mercy, and the world suddenly becomes a more pleasant place for the good people, and nothing of value is lost. I won’t shed a tear for El Salvadoran criminals.