El Salvador offers to swap Venezuelan US deportees for political prisoners

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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported to his country by the US in exchange for “political prisoners” held by Caracas.

Bukele, the authoritarian leader of El Salvador, has agreed to hold deportees from the US in a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT in exchange for a fee. The Trump administration has claimed the Venezuelan migrants belong to criminal gangs including Tren de Aragua, which Washington designates a “terrorist organisation”.

But some of the migrants have not been convicted or charged with a crime, and they were deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order blocking the move.

The Trump administration admitted in court this month that one of the migrants was deported wrongly due to an “administrative error”, and some of the men signed paperwork agreeing to be returned to their home country, family members told the Financial Times.

Bukele wrote on social media platform X on Sunday that the men could be sent to Venezuela in exchange for the same number of “political prisoners” being held by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro under a “humanitarian agreement”.

“Your political prisoners haven’t committed any crime,” he wrote.

The El Salvadoran president did not specify the fate of the prisoners to be accepted from Venezuela.

A spokesperson for the Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bukele has a close relationship with US President Donald Trump’s administration, whose officials have praised his iron-fisted approach to crime.

But the deportations — which both Washington and Bukele have publicised on social media, posting images and videos of men with shaven heads, doubled over in chains — have drawn public condemnation from rights groups and Democratic politicians.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland, travelled this week El Salvador and met Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration admitted it had wrongly deported.

The US Supreme Court last week ruled that the White House should “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but Bukele has refused assist in his repatriation.

If Maduro were to accept the deal, it could ease political pressure on the Trump administration, which has been accused of denying due process to immigration detainees. The Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily blocked the White House from further deportations under a rarely used 18th century law.

Maduro, who assumed Venezuela’s presidency in 2013 following the death of socialist revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, has cracked down on dissent following a disputed election in July. According to Venezuelan rights group Foro Penal, there are 903 political prisoners being held in the country, including protester and opposition leaders.

Among the political prisoners Bukele mentioned was the son-in-law of Edmundo González, a former diplomat who ran against Maduro and is regarded by Washington and many of its allies as the winner of last year’s election. He also referred to a journalist, Roland Carreño, and the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose home has been repeatedly surrounded by government agents.

Maduro has also presided over an economic collapse that has led 7.7mn Venezuelans — nearly a quarter of the population — to flee the country.

After initially pursuing talks with Maduro, Trump has intensified a “maximum pressure” campaign from his first term in office, imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s vital oil industry and cancelling Biden-era exemptions granted to international energy groups including Chevron, Repsol, and Eni.

Last month, Washington announced 25 per cent “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy Venezuelan crude, in an effort to cut off funds to Maduro’s regime.