CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela on Friday released 10 jailed U.S. citizens and permanent residents in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, officials said.
The complex, three-country arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a swap that he proposed months ago.
“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked Bukele, a Trump ally.
Bukele said El Salvador had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. Maduro described Friday as “a day of blessings and good news for Venezuela." He called it “the perfect day for Venezuela.”
Venezuelans leave El Salvador's mega-prisonCentral to the deal are more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in its notorious prison.
That arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove the men that his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang, teeing up a legal fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration did not provide evidence to back up those claims.
The Venezuelans had been held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which was built to hold alleged gang members in Bukele’s war on the country’s gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths as well as cases of torture inside its walls.
Lawyers have little access to those in the prison, which is heavily guarded, and information has been locked tight, other than heavily produced state propaganda videos showing tattooed men packed behind bars.
Photos and videos released by El Salvador’s government on Friday showed shackled Venezuelans sitting in a fleet of buses and boarding planes surrounded by officers in riot gear. One man looked up and pointed toward the sky as he climbed aboard a plane, while another made an obscene gesture toward police.
After arriving in Venezuela, some of the migrants crossed themselves, cried and hugged one another. They wore face masks and street clothes.
Maduro alleged that some of them were subjected to various forms of abuse at the Salvadoran prison, and one of them even lost a kidney “due to the beatings he received.”
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello told reporters the men would undergo medical tests and background checks before they can go home.
One of the men is reportedly Andry Hernández Romero, a makeup artist who fled Venezuela last year and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at a border crossing in San Diego before eventually being flown to El Salvador.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., posted on social media Friday night: “We have been in touch with Andry Hernández Romero’s legal team and they have confirmed he is out of CECOT and back in Venezuela. We are grateful he is alive and are engaged with both the State Department and his team.”
In April, Bukele proposed exchanging the Venezuelans for the same number of what he called “political prisoners” held by Maduro. The suggestion provoked a harsh response from Venezuelan authorities, who called his comments “cynical” and referred to Bukele as a “neofascist."
Families say the Americans released are innocentThe State Department office responsible for negotiating the release of American detainees posted a photo Friday evening of the newly released prisoners smiling for the camera inside an airplane bringing them home, some clutching an unfurled American flag.
A plane carrying the freed Americans arrived late Friday evening at Joint Base San Antonio, with some waving flags and rushing to embrace welcomers after they landed.
Among those released was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, whose family says he was kidnapped in January by Venezuelan border guards from inside Colombia, where he was vacationing.
“We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,” his younger sister Sophie Hunter said.
Venezuelan authorities detained nearly a dozen U.S. citizens in the second half of 2024 and linked them to alleged plots to destabilize the country.
“We have prayed for this day for almost a year. My brother is an innocent man who was used as a political pawn by the Maduro regime," said a statement from Christian Castaneda, whose brother Wilbert, a Navy SEAL, was arrested in his Caracas hotel room last year.
Global Reach, a nonprofit organization that had advocated for his release and that of several other Americans, said Venezuelan officials initially and falsely accused him of being involved in a coup but backed off that claim.
The three-country swap gives Maduro a boostThe release of the Venezuelans, meanwhile, is an invaluable win for Maduro as he presses his efforts to assert himself as president despite credible evidence that he lost reelection last year.
Long accused of human rights abuses, Maduro for months has used the migrants' detention in El Salvador to flip the script on the U.S. government, forcing even some of his strongest political opponents to agree with his condemnation of the migrants’ treatment.
Their return will allow Maduro to reaffirm support within his shrinking base, while demonstrating that even if the Trump administration and other nations see him as an illegitimate president, he is still firmly in power.
Just a week ago, the U.S. State Department reiterated its policy of shunning Maduro government officials and recognizing only the National Assembly elected in 2015 as the legitimate government of the country. Signed by Rubio, the cable said U.S. officials are free to meet and have discussions with National Assembly members “but cannot engage with Maduro regime representatives unless cleared by the Department of State.”
Maduro's crackdown on dissent spurs detentionsThe Americans were among dozens of people, including activists, opposition members and union leaders, that Venezuela’s government took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent in the 11 months since Maduro claimed to win reelection.
Besides the U.S., several other Western nations also do not recognize Maduro’s claim to victory. They instead point to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, won the July 2024 election by a more than a two-to-one margin.
The dispute over results prompted immediate protests, and the government responded by detaining more than 2,000 people, mostly poor young men. González fled into exile in Spain to avoid arrest.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have migrated since 2013, when its oil-dependent economy came undone and Maduro became president. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, many saw the U.S. as their best chance to improve their living conditions.
The US and Venezuela have agreed on other releasesDespite the U.S. not recognizing Maduro, the two governments have carried out other recent exchanges.
In May, Venezuela freed a U.S. Air Force veteran after about six months in detention. Joseph St. Clair's family has said the language specialist, who served four tours in Afghanistan, had traveled to South America to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Three months earlier, six other Americans whom the U.S. government considered wrongfully detained in Venezuela were released after Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, met with Maduro at the presidential palace.
Grenell, during the meeting in Caracas, urged Maduro to take back deported migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. Hundreds of Venezuelans have since been deported to their home country.
Maduro’s government had accused the Trump administration of “kidnapping” the children by placing them in foster care after their parents were deported.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that the last name of the brother of the Navy SEAL jailed in Venezuela is Castaneda, not Castenada.
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Tucker reported from Washington and Janetsky from Mexico City. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Seung Min Kim in Washington and photographer Salvador Melendez in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this report.
