Venezuela released 10 detained Americans on Friday to be deported to El Salvador with migrants to El Salvador months after months after months after months after months.
The agreement represents a diplomatic performance for the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump helps to bring Americans home, who are locked up abroad, and ends up El Salvador an exchange that his president had proposed months ago.
“Every wrongly held American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” said Foreign Minister Marco Rubio in a statement in which he thanked El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
Bukele said his country handed over all Venezuelan citizens in his care. The Venezuelan government said that it paid a “steep price” by publishing the US members of the US, but was pleased to hold back its own citizens.
Central to the deal are the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants, which are freed from El Salvador, who in March agreed to pay a payment of 6 million US dollars from the Trump government in a notorious Salvadorical prison.
The agreement resigned immediately when Trump was a law of the 18th century, the extraterrestrial enemy law, called to remove men who had accused his government, belonged to the violent street gang of Tren de Aragua. The administration did not provide any evidence to support these claims.
The Venezuelans were captured in a mega-conology, which is known as terrorism boundary center or Cecot, which was built for the alleged gang members in Bukeles war against the country gangs. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths and torture cases in their walls.
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The 37-year-old Lucas Hunter was among the American Americans, whose family said he was kidnapped in January by the Venezuelan border protection officials from Colombia, where he went on vacation.
“We can’t wait to see him personally and help him to recover from the ordeal,” said his younger sister Sophie Hunter.
The publication of the Venezolans is an invaluable victory for Maduro when he urges his efforts, despite credible evidence that he lost the re -election last year, asserted himself as president. Maduro, long about the reception of the allegations of human rights violations, Maduro used the detention of men in El Salvador for months to turn the script about the US government, and even forced some of his strongest political opponents to agree to the treatment of migrants.
The return of migrants enables Maduro to reaffirm support in his shrinking basis, while it shows that the Trump government and other nations see him as an illegitimate president that is still firm in power.
The press release takes place only one week after the Foreign Ministry has repeated its policy to avoid Maduro government officials and only recognize the national assembly elected in 2015 as a legitimate government of the country. The cable signed by Rubio said that US officials are free to meet with members of the National Assembly and have discussions, “but do not get in touch with representatives of Maduro regime, unless the Foreign Ministry was no longer in contact with the representatives of Maduro.
In the second half of 2024, the Venezuelan authorities arrested almost a dozen US citizens and linked them with alleged actions to destabilize the country.
“We prayed for this day for almost a year. My brother is an innocent man who was used by the Maduro regime as a political farmer, said a statement by Christian Casteneda, whose brother Wilbert, a navy Seal, was arrested in his Caracas hotel room last year.
Global Reach, a non -profit organization that supported himself for his release and that of several other Americans, said that the Venezuelan official initially accused him of being involved in a coup, but to reset this claim.
The Americans belonged to dozens of humans, including activists, opposition members and union leaders who took the government of Venezuela in their brutal campaign in order to act against Dissens in the eleven months since Maduro.
Together with several other western nations of Maduro’s claim to victory, the US government does not recognize and instead refers to Tally leaves that were collected by the opposition coalition, which shows that its candidate Edmundo González won the election in July 2024 with more than one two-to-edge edge.
The dispute over the results led to immediate protests, and the government reacted by arresting more than 2,000 people, mostly poor young men. González fled into exile in Spain to avoid arrest.
Although the USA did not recognize Maduro, the two governments have carried out other youngest stock exchanges.
In May, Venezuela freed a veteran of the US air weapon after about six months in custody. The von Scott St. Clair family said that the language specialist, who looked after four tours in Afghanistan, had traveled to South America to treat a 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 other Americans, who had incorrectly imprisoned the US government in Venezuela, were released after Grenell Maduro hit the President Palace.
During the meeting in Venezuela’s capital Caracas, Grenell Maduro asked to recapture migrants who committed crimes in the United States. Hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported to their home country since then, but more than 200 from the United States have been held in prison in El Salvador since mid -March.
Lawyers have little access to those in prison that are being guarded, and the information has been closely locked up, except for strongly produced state propaganda videos that show tattooed men packed behind bars.
As a result, prominent human rights groups and lawyers who worked with the Venezuelans in legal cases had little information about their movement until they got on the plane.
& copy the Canadian press in 2025
