Members of the Salvadorian military stand guard at most safety penitentiary CECOT on April 4, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.
Alex Peña/Getty Photographs
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Alex Peña/Getty Photographs
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Venezuela has freed 10 People in alternate for Venezuelans whom the USA had despatched to a jail in El Salvador, the U.S. and Salvadoran governments stated Friday.
In a press release, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, “the United States welcomes home ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela.”
“We also welcome the release of Venezuelan political prisoners and detainees that were also released from Venezuelan prisons,” the assertion continued.
Earlier, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed the alternate in a message on X. He stated his authorities handed over Venezuelans accused of being a part of a gang in alternate for “a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners” in addition to People.
He stated the swap was the results of “months of negotiations with a tyrannical regime,” and added that U.S. officers had helped to rearrange the deal.
Rubio reposted Bukele’s message, then Rubio wrote on X, “ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom.”
A State Division official later informed NPR that the folks free of Venezuela included residents and everlasting residents of the U.S. who had been designated as “wrongfully detained” lower than a yr in the past, after the South American nation’s elections.
President Bukele stated they had been headed to El Salvador earlier than persevering with dwelling to the U.S.
In March, the Trump administration despatched about 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, whose authorities was paid to deal with them in a most safety jail, generally known as CECOT.
The US accused lots of the males of being gang members and deported them beneath the Alien Enemies Act, which had not been invoked since World Struggle II.
Legal professionals for the Venezuelan deportees argue their switch to El Salvador was unlawful. Dozens of them had been in the course of asylum instances, and had been held in U.S. detention facilities for months.
On Friday, Bukele revealed a video of males in handcuffs he stated had been being handed over to Venezuela, as they boarded a airplane taking them to the South American nation.
At the moment, we have now handed over all of the Venezuelan nationals detained in our nation, accused of being a part of the prison group Tren de Aragua (TDA). A lot of them face a number of prices of homicide, theft, rape, and different critical crimes.
As was supplied to the Venezuelan… pic.twitter.com/teuIT4GiRT
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 18, 2025
The prisoner swap was stored secret till Friday and a few of the kinfolk of the Venezuelan migrants say they came upon about it on social media.
Gabriela Mora, whose husband Carlos Uzcategui was one of many males despatched by the U.S. to El Salvador, tells NPR she was at an occasion at her daughter’s faculty when she realized concerning the information.
“This makes us very happy” she says. “We have waited for this day for too long.”
Uzcategui, a coal miner from Venezuela’s Tachira state, entered the U.S. in December after he acquired an appointment, by means of the U.S. authorities’s CBP One app, to cross the U.S. border and make his case for asylum.
He was then held in a detention middle in Texas. U.S. immigration officers have alleged that tattoos of crowns and stars on his chest had been linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Uzcategui’s household says he acquired the tattoos 15 years in the past, earlier than the gang had even been established.
“He is not a gang member,” Mora stated in an interview in Could. “Just a hard working man who wants to provide for his family.”
This can be a growing story that could be up to date.
NPR’s Michele Kelemen contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
