Héctor Gustavo Villatoro Funes is a Salvadoran politician who currently serves as the Minister of Justice and Public Security. He was appointed by President Nayib Bukele in 2021. During Villatoro's term, he has overseen the Salvadoran gang crackdown which has since led to the arrests of over 74,000 alleged gang members as of 7 December 2023.

The Salvadoran gang crackdown, referred to in El Salvador as the régimen de excepción and the guerra contra las pandillas, began in March 2022 in response to a crime spike between 25 and 27 March 2022, when 87 people were killed in El Salvador. The Salvadoran government blamed the spike in murders on criminal gangs in the country, resulting in the country's legislature approving a state of emergency that suspended the rights of association and legal counsel, and increased the time spent in detention without charge, among other measures that expanded the powers of law enforcement in the country.