Venezuela releases jailed Americans in deal that also frees migrants deported to El Salvador by US
CARACAS Venezuela AP Venezuela issued jailed Americans Friday in exchange for getting home scores of displaced persons deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration s immigration crackdown The resolution represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicol s Maduro helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands El Salvador a swap that it had proposed months ago Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for securing the agreement Ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom Rubio tweeted El Salvador will send back particular Venezuelan displaced persons after the Trump administration agreed to pay million to house them in a notorious Salvadoran prison The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an th century wartime law to fleetly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang The Venezuelans have been held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT which was built to hold alleged gang members in Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele s war on the country s gangs Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths and cases of torture inside its walls The release of the Venezuelans is an invaluable win for Maduro as he presses his efforts to assert himself as president despite credible evidence that he lost reelection last year Long on the receiving end of accusations of human rights abuses Maduro for months used the men s detention in El Salvador to flip the script on the U S establishment forcing even chosen of his strongest political opponents to agree with his condemnation of the immigrants therapy The transients return will allow Maduro to reaffirm assistance within his shrinking base while it demonstrates that even if the Trump administration and other nations see him as an illegitimate president he is still firmly in power Venezuelan officials detained nearly a dozen U S citizens in the second half of and linked them to alleged plots to destabilize the country They were among the dozens of people including activists opposition members and union leaders that Venezuela s regime took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent in the months since Maduro claimed to win reelection The U S establishment along with several other Western nations does not recognize Maduro s claim to win and instead points to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition showing that its candidate Edmundo Gonz lez won the July electoral contest by a more than a two-to-one margin The dispute over results prompted immediate protests and the regime responded by detaining more than people mostly poor young men Gonz lez fled into exile in Spain to avoid arrest Despite the U S not recognizing Maduro the two governments have carried out other latest exchanges In May Venezuela freed a U S Air Force veteran after about six months in detention Scott St Clair s family has announced the language specialist who served four tours in Afghanistan had traveled to South America to seek medicine for post-traumatic stress disorder St Clair was handed over to Richard Grenell Trump s envoy for special missions during a meeting on a Caribbean island Three months earlier six other Americans whom the U S administration considered wrongfully detained in Venezuela were disclosed after Grenell met with Maduro at the presidential palace Grenell during the meeting in Venezuela s capital Caracas urged Maduro to take back deported settlers who have committed crimes in the U S Hundreds of Venezuelans have since been deported to their home country but more than deported from the U S have been held since mid-March at the prison in El Salvador Lawyers have little access to those in the prison which is heavily guarded and information has been locked tight other than heavily produced state propaganda videos showing tattooed men packed behind bars As a product prominent human rights groups and lawyers working with the Venezuelans on legal cases had little information of their movement until they boarded the plane
