El Salvador on Friday freed scores of Venezuelans deported from the United States to a notorious maximum security prison, the outcome of a highly coordinated prisoner swap between Caracas and Washington.
The administration of US President Donald Trump said the men were released in exchange for 10 Americans held in Venezuela, and an unknown number of “political prisoners” in the South American country.
The move appears to end a months-long detention of migrants that had been decried by rights groups and slammed by Trump’s critics in the United States.
After prolonged uncertainty over the fate of more than 250 Venezuelans expelled from the United States in March, two Caracas-bound Venezuelan planes took off from San Salvador on Friday to the immense joy and relief of loved ones back home.
“I can’t contain my happiness,” Mercedes Yamarte, mother of CECOT inmate Mervin Yamarte, told AFP.
“I arranged the reception, what am I going to do? I’ll make a soup.”
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on X that “today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country.”
The United States sent the group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March to be locked up in its feared CECOT anti-“terrorism” jail, accused without evidence of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.
The Trump administration invoked rarely used wartime laws to fly the men to the Central American nation without any court hearings.
Bukele claimed in his post that many of the men “face multiple charges for murder, robbery, rape, and other serious crimes.”
‘High price’
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X Friday that “ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom” thanks to a deal that also included “the release of Venezuelan political prisoners.”
He thanked Bukele “for helping secure an agreement for the release of all of our American detainees.”
The US embassy in Caracas published a photo of the individuals with American flags.
In the United States, families were also excited to see their loved ones return. One had been imprisoned for nearly a year.
Global Reach, an NGO that works for wrongly detained Americans, said one of the men freed was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, held since he was “kidnapped” by Venezuelan border guards while vacationing in Colombia in January.
“We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,” it quoted his younger sister Sophie Hunter as saying.
Uruguay said one of its citizens, resident in the United States, was among those liberated after nine months in Venezuelan detention.
Nicolas Maduro’s government in a statement said it had paid a “high price” to secure the return of its compatriots.
Apart from the freeing of the Americans, it said “alternative measures” to imprisonment had been granted to Venezuelans detained for “their involvement in common crimes and offenses against the constitutional order.”
The prisoner rights NGO Foro Penal told AFP it was verifying the identities of the people concerned.
– ‘Rescued’ –
Another plane arrived at Maiquetia airport earlier Friday from Houston with 244 Venezuelans deported from the United States and seven children who Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said had been “rescued from the kidnapping to which they were being subjected.”
The children were among 30 who Caracas says remained in the United States after their Venezuelan parents were expelled.
Clamping down on migrants is a flagship pursuit of Trump’s administration, which has ramped up raids and deportations.
It has agreed with Maduro to send undocumented Venezuelans back home, and flights have been arriving near daily also from Mexico, where many got stuck trying to enter the United States.
Official figures show that since February, more than 8,200 people have been repatriated to Venezuela from the United States and Mexico, including some 1,000 children.
The Venezuelans detained in El Salvador had no right to phone calls or visits, and their relatives unsuccessfully requested proof of life.
Bukele had CECOT built as part of his war on criminal gangs, but he agreed to receive millions of dollars from the United States to house the Venezuelans there.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have denounced the detentions as a violation of human rights.
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