{"id":273262,"date":"2025-07-18T23:26:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T23:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/273262\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T23:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T23:26:17","slug":"venezuela-releases-jailed-americans-in-swap-for-deported-migrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/273262\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela releases jailed Americans in swap for deported migrants"},"content":{"rendered":"

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) \u2014 Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans on Friday in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States<\/a> to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown, officials said.<\/p>\n

The complex, three-country arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked Bukele, a Trump ally<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This photo released by the El Salvador\u2019s presidential press office shows men, who El Salvador\u2019s government identify as Venezuelans who the U.S. government detained and flew to El Salvador months ago, boarding a Venezuelan plane bound for Venezuela at the Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, Friday, July 18, 2025. (El Salvador\u2019s presidential press office via AP)<\/p>\n

This photo released by the El Salvador\u2019s presidential press office shows men, who El Salvador\u2019s government identify as Venezuelans who the U.S. government detained and flew to El Salvador months ago, boarding a Venezuelan plane bound for Venezuela at the Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, Friday, July 18, 2025. (El Salvador\u2019s presidential press office via AP)<\/p>\n

Read More<\/p>\n

Bukele said El Salvador had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. Maduro described Friday as \u201ca day of blessings and good news for Venezuela\u201d during his address to a gathering of agriculture producers.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is the perfect day for Venezuela,\u201d he said. \u201cToday has been a splendid day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuelans leave El Salvador\u2019s mega-prison<\/p>\n

Central to the deal are more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million<\/a> payment from the Trump administration to house them in its notorious prison. <\/p>\n

That arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law<\/a>, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove the men that his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua<\/a> street gang, teeing up a legal fight<\/a> that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration did not provide evidence to back up those claims.<\/p>\n

The Venezuelans have been held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center<\/a>, or CECOT, which was built to hold alleged gang members in Bukele\u2019s war on the country\u2019s gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths as well as cases of torture<\/a> inside its walls.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Photos and videos released by El Salvador\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In April, in a heated exchange of diplomatic letters with Venezuela, Bukele proposed exchanging the Venezuelans for the same number of what he called \u201cpolitical prisoners\u201d held by Maduro. It provoked a harsh response from Venezuelan authorities, who called his comments \u201ccynical\u201d and referred to Bukele as a \u201cneofascist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Families say the Americans released are innocent<\/p>\n

The 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,\u201d his younger sister Sophie Hunter said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An aircraft with a Venezuelan flag taxis on the runway to another area of the Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, Friday, July 18, 2025. (AP Photo\/Salvador Melendez)<\/p>\n

An aircraft with a Venezuelan flag taxis on the runway to another area of the Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, Friday, July 18, 2025. (AP Photo\/Salvador Melendez)<\/p>\n

Read More<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d said a statement from Christian Casteneda, whose brother Wilbert, a Navy SEAL, was arrested in his Caracas hotel room last year.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The three-country swap gives Maduro a boost <\/p>\n

The 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<\/a> last year. <\/p>\n

Long accused of human rights abuses, Maduro for months has used the migrants\u2019 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\u2019 treatment.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, he is still firmly in power.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cbut cannot engage with Maduro regime representatives unless cleared by the Department of State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s crackdown on dissent spurs detentions<\/p>\n

The Americans were among dozens of people, including activists, opposition members and union leaders, that Venezuela\u2019s government took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent<\/a> in the 11 months since Maduro claimed to win reelection.<\/p>\n

Besides the U.S., several other Western nations also do not recognize Maduro\u2019s claim to victory. They instead point to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition<\/a> showing that its candidate, Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, won the July 2024 election by a more than a two-to-one margin. <\/p>\n

The dispute over results prompted immediate protests, and the government responded by detaining more than 2,000 people<\/a>, mostly poor young men. Gonz\u00e1lez fled into exile in Spain to avoid arrest.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The US and Venezuela have agreed on other releases<\/p>\n

Despite the U.S. not recognizing Maduro, the two governments have carried out other recent exchanges. <\/p>\n

In May, Venezuela freed a U.S. Air Force veteran<\/a> after about six months in detention. Scott St. Clair\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Three months earlier, six other Americans<\/a> whom the U.S. government considered wrongfully detained in Venezuela were released after Richard Grenell, Trump\u2019s envoy for special missions, met with Maduro at the presidential palace. <\/p>\n

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, including 251 people, including seven children, who arrived Friday.<\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s government had accused the Trump administration of \u201ckidnapping\u201d the children by placing them in foster care after their parents were deported.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Tucker reported from Washington and Janetsky from Mexico City. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) \u2014 Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans on Friday in exchange for getting home scores of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[48181,27009,103476,32,103474,8525,4179,10680,40,8614,3274,103473,2820,42487,37887,285,14618,35417,103472,103475,22713,7143,49,5213,978,659,8518,103471,10673,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-273262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-central-america","9":"tag-child-abuse","10":"tag-christian-casteneda","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-edmundo-gonzlez","13":"tag-el-salvador","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-and-politics","16":"tag-immigration","17":"tag-international-agreements","18":"tag-latin-america","19":"tag-lucas-hunter","20":"tag-marco-rubio","21":"tag-nayib-bukele","22":"tag-nicolas-maduro","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-prisons","25":"tag-richard-grenell","26":"tag-scott-st-clair","27":"tag-sophie-hunter","28":"tag-south-america","29":"tag-u-s-news","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-united-states-government","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-usa","34":"tag-venezuela","35":"tag-venezuela-government","36":"tag-washington-news","37":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}