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Across a new transnational wave of illiberal, authoritarian leaders, tough-on-crime approaches to public safety are growing. The case of contemporary El Salvador’s State of Exception policy, in which President Nayib Bukele suspended due process protections and imprisoned suspected gang members with little to no evidence, offers a window into how a dramatic reduction of violence through authoritarian means might shape international migration. Using U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, Swindle and coauthors find that neither visual analyses nor difference-in-differences models convincingly show that Bukele’s State of Exception uniquely reduced Salvadoran migration to the U.S., and their descriptive analyses of national surveys point toward similar conclusions. Instead, they find that volatile migration trends appear more closely linked to shifts in U.S. border policies. Results contradict media reports and politicians’ claims of a dramatic reduction in Salvadoran migration, and they call into question tough-on-crime strategies and authoritarianism’s promises.

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