 "'Free at last': US releases 250 Venezuelans held in El Salvador in exchange for 10 Americans")
Scores of Venezuelans deported from the United States arrived back home from a notorious Salvadoran jail Friday, as a prisoner swap agreement ended a months-long ordeal decried by rights groups.
As two planes transporting the men touched down in the evening at the main airport serving Caracas, President Nicolas Maduro thanked his US counterpart Donald Trump for making it happen.
“Free, free at last!” the Venezuelan leader rejoiced at a public event.
The Trump administration 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 United States had sent a group of 252 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.
Trump invoked rarely used wartime laws to have the men flown to the Central American nation without any court hearings.
“Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on X.
“I can’t contain my happiness,” Mercedes Yamarte, mother of CECOT inmate Mervin Yamarte, told AFP ahead of the aircrafts’ arrival.
“I arranged the reception, what am I going to do? I’ll make a soup.”
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and other officials boarded the first plane to land, and passengers could be heard singing the Venezuelan anthem.
Maduro thanked Trump for “the decision to rectify this totally irregular situation.”
The number of migrants on the two planes has not been confirmed.
‘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.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe 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.
Venezuela’s government in a statement said it had paid a “high price” to secure the return of its compatriots: “terrorists for innocents,” according to Maduro.
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 US after their Venezuelan parents were deported.
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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