Santa Fe Governor Maximiliano Pullaro made headlines Wednesday after sharing images on social media of a raid in a Rosario prison showing men surrounded by masked officers and sitting on the floor with no shirts on and their heads lowered, a tactic inspired by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and his tough-on-crime approach. 

The images were taken during a surprise raid at the Piñeyro prison that houses high-profile inmates and the accompanying caption concluded that things “will get worse” for them. 

“The order to make life impossible for Santa Fe citizens comes from inside the prisons […] Inmates are in jail, and we will not accept any extortion. If they don’t understand, things will get worse for them,” said the post, which was originally published by Santa Fe Security and Justice Minister Pablo Cococcioni.

The raid was launched following an attack last Sunday against two buses carrying prison officials from Rosario to Sante Fe City. According to media reports, a car pulled up against one of the buses and opened fire. Three officers suffered minor injuries. 

According to Cococcioni, the new government’s approach to prison management was the reason behind the shooting. “We will continue tightening prison control, restricting visits, checking [visitors], increasing patrols, investigating, and heightening prison security,” he said in a statement posted on X, adding that the Pullaro administration will not “back down.” 

Rosario is the city with the highest murder rate in Argentina by far. According to the Santa Fe Public Security Observatory, the city registered 259 homicides in 2023, with a rate of 22 deaths per 100,000 people — more than five times the country’s rate of 4.2.

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Bukele, who was reelected as president of El Salvador in early February in a landslide, built his popularity by reducing the country’s once soaring homicide rate to historic lows. This success has come at the cost of eroding civil rights, with tens of thousands imprisoned under a “state of emergency” provision passed in March 2022 that has allowed the state to arrest and try suspected gang members without due process. There have also been accusations of massive human rights violations, from forced disappearances and torture to prison overcrowding. 

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich celebrated the raid in a post on X, calling Sunday’s attack a “clear threat” from drug traffickers and congratulating Pullaro: “What goes around, comes around.”

Bullrich is a high-profile proponent of applying Bukele-style tactics in Argentina and has repeatedly lauded his controversial security tactics. The two met at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, where Bullrich congratulated the Salvadoran president, saying that Argentina “needs to get to the same place.”