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The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, proposed to repatriate 252 Venezuelans expelled in his country by the United States in exchange for “political prisoners” held by Caracas.
Bukele, the authoritarian chief of El Salvadoragreed to have deportees from the United States in a notorious maximum security prison known as CECOT in exchange for costs. The Trump administration said that Venezuelan migrants belong to criminal gangs, including Tren from Aragua, that Washington designates a “terrorist organization”.
But some of the migrants were not sentenced or accused of a crime, and they were expelled in Salvador last month despite an order from the court blocking this decision.
The Trump administration admitted to the court this month that one of the migrants had been wrongly expelled due to an “administrative error”, and some men signed documents accepting to be returned to their country of origin, family members told Financial Times.
Bukele wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday that men could be sent to Venezuela in exchange for the same number of “political prisoners” held by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro under a “humanitarian agreement”.
“Your political prisoners have not committed any crime,” he wrote.
The president of Salvadoran El did not specify the fate of the prisoners to accept Venezuela.
A spokesperson for the Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Bukele has a close relationship with the administration of American president Donald Trump, whose officials praised his iron approach to the crime.
But the deportations – which Washington and Bukele have published on social networks, publishing images and videos of men with shaved heads, doubled in the channels – attracted the condemnation of the public of the Democratic rights and politicians.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic Senator from Maryland, has traveled this week El Salvador and met Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration admitted that he had been wrongly deported.
Last week, the United States Supreme Court decided that the White House should “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, but Bukele refused assistance to its repatriation.
If Maduro accepted the agreement, it could relieve political pressure on the Trump administration, which was accused of refusing regular procedure with the immigrant prisoners. On Saturday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the White House with new deportations under a rarely used law of the 18th century.
Maduro, who assumed the presidency of Venezuela in 2013 after the death of the socialist revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, repressed the dissent following a disputed election in July. According to the group for the defense of Venezuelan Rights Foro Penal, 903 political prisoners held in the country, including the heads of demonstration and the opposition.
Among the political prisoners Bukele mentioned was the son -in -law of Edmundo González, a former diplomat who appeared against Maduro and is considered by Washington and many of his allies as winner of last year’s elections. He also referred to a journalist, Roland Carreño, and to the mother of the opposition chief MarÃa Corina Machado, whose house was surrounded several times as government agents.
Maduro also presided over an economic collapse which led 7.7 million Venezuelans – almost a quarter of the population – to flee the country.
After having initially continued his talks with Maduro, Trump intensified a campaign of “maximum pressure” of his first mandate, imposing sanctions on the vital vital industry in Venezuela and canceling the era of Biden Exemptions granted International energy groups, notably Chevron, Repsol and Eni.
Last month, Washington announced 25% of “secondary prices” on countries that buy Venezuelan crude, with the aim of cutting funds from the Maduro regime.
