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Venezuela released 10 Americans imprisoned on Friday in exchange for obtaining dozens of migrants home deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the repression of immigration of the Trump administration, authorities said.
The agreement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing the Americans to home imprisoned abroad and land an exchange that its president had proposed months ago.
“Every American unfairly detained in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” said Secretary of State Frame Rubio in a statement in which he thanked the president of El Salvadoran, Nayib Bukele.
Bukele said his country had given all Venezuelan nationals in their custody. The Venezuelan government said he had paid a “high price” by having to free the nationals of the United States, but was pleased to recover their own jailed citizens.
The center of the agreement is the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants that El Salvador released, which in March agreed to pay $ 6 million of the Trump administration to house them in a notorious saving prison.
The agreement extracted the immediate recoil when Trump invoked a law of war of the 18th century, the Alien Enemies Law, to quickly eliminate the men that their administration had accused of belonging to the violent street gang of Train of Aragua. The administration did not provide evidence to support those statements.
Venezuelans have been carried out in a mega prison known as the terrorism confinement center, or Cecot, which was built to celebrate alleged gang members in Bukele’s war against the country’s gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths and torture cases within their walls.
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Among the Americans released on Friday were Lucas Hunter, 37, whose family says he was kidnapped in January by Venezuelan border guards from inside Colombia, where he was on vacation.
“We can’t wait to see him in person and help him recover from terrible experience,” said his younger sister Sophie Hunter.
The launch of Venezuelans is an invaluable victory for Maduro, since he presses his efforts to affirm himself as president despite the credible evidence that he lost re -election last year. For a long time at the end of the accusations of human rights abuses, Maduro for months used the arrest of men in El Salvador to turn the script of the United States government, forcing even some of their strongest political opponents to agree with their condemnation for the treatment of migrants.
The return of migrants will allow Maduro to reaffirm support within his reduction base, while demonstrating that even if the Trump administration and other nations see him as an illegitimate president, he is still firmly in power.
The statement occurs only one week after the State Department reiterated its policy of avoiding maturo government officials and recognizing only the National Assembly elected in 2015 as the legitimate government of the country. Signed by Rubio, the cable said that US officials are free to meet and talk with the members of the National Assembly “but cannot interact with the representatives of the Maduro regime unless the State Department authorizes.”
Venezuelan authorities arrested almost a dozen US 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 Maduro’s regime, said a statement from Christian Castenea, whose brother Wilbert, a Seal of the Navy, was arrested in his room at the Caracas Hotel last year.
Global Reach, a non -profit organization that had advocated its liberation and that of several other Americans, said that Venezuelan officials accused him initially and falsely of being involved in a coup d’etat, but retreated that statement.
The Americans were among dozens of people, including activists, opposition members and union leaders, that the Venezuelan government arrested in its brutal campaign to take energetic measures in the 11 months since Maduro said he won the re -election.
The United States government, together with several other Western nations, does not recognize the claim of Maduro’s victory and, on the other hand, points out the account sheets collected by the opposition coalition that shows that his candidate, Edmundo González, won the July 2024 elections for a margin more than two to one.
The dispute over the results caused immediate protests, and the government responded to stop more than 2,000 people, mostly poor young people. González fled to exile in Spain to avoid arrest.
Although the United States does not recognize Maduro, the two governments have carried out other recent exchanges.
In May, Venezuela released a veteran of the United States Air Force after about six months of detention. Scott St. Clair’s family has said that the language specialist, who served four tours in Afghanistan, had traveled to South America to seek treatment for post -traumatic stress disorder.
St. Clair was delivered to Richard Grenelll, Trump’s sent for special missions, during a meeting on a Caribbean island.
Three months before, six other Americans that the United States government considered unfairly detained in Venezuela were released after Grenell met with Maduro in the presidential palace.
Grenelll, during the meeting in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, urged Maduro to recover deported immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported to their country of origin, but more than 200 deported from the United States have been held since mid -March in prison in El Salvador.
The lawyers have little access to those in prison, which is very protected, and the information has been blocked, apart from the very produced state propaganda videos that show tattooed men full of bars.
As a result, the prominent human rights groups and lawyers who work with Venezuelans in legal cases had little information about their movement until they approached the plane.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
