Venezuelans deported by Trump to brutal El Salvador prison are transferred to Caracas in exchange for Americans: reports
Dozens of Venezuelans that Donald Trump had deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador have been sent back to their home country under a bilateral deal to secure the release of Americans locked up in Venezuela.
Under the deal, more than 200 Venezuelans summarily deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, will be sent to Caracas, according to Reuters and Bloomberg, citing officials familiar with the matter.
In exchange, the Venezuelan government will deliver five U.S. citizens and five lawful permanent residents back to American custody.
Friday’s prison swap follows the Trump administration’s allegedly bungled efforts to try to release Americans imprisoned in Venezuela in exchange for sending home dozens of men that the administration accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members.
The release of Venezuelans who have been imprisoned at the facility for more than four months could also potentially expose what they experienced inside and what conditions are like for hundreds of people languishing inside the notorious prison.
So far, only one person deported from the United States to CECOT has made it back.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran father who was living in Maryland, was abruptly returned to the United States after a weeks-long court battle over his arrest and removal. Administration officials initially said he was deported by mistake before repeatedly insisting the U.S. government no longer had jurisdiction over him. Last month, he was returned to face a federal criminal indictment in Tennessee accusing him of smuggling immigrants across the country.
A recent court filing detailed for the first time what current conditions at the Salvadoran prison are like for the dozens of Venezuelan immigrants still inside.
Abrego Garcia was subject to “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture” at the facility, according to his attorneys.
The Independent has requested comment from the State Department.
Despite the Trump administration’s claims that deportees sent to the notorious maximum-security prison were no longer the responsibility of the United States, officials have been using them as a bargaining chip in a weeks-in-the-making prisoner exchange.
But those competing negotiations, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in one camp and presidential envoy Richard Grenell in another, had appeared to fall apart until Friday’s alleged breakthrough.
Their return had been a long-standing demand of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has accused Nayib Bukele’s regime and the Trump administration of committing human rights abuses by locking up immigrants in the Salvadoran prison, labelled by humanitarian groups as a “tropical gulag” and concentration camp.
Roughly 250 Venezuelans were deported to El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center beginning March 15, when Trump invoked a centuries-old wartime law that labelled alleged Tren de Aragua gang members “alien enemies” who could be removed from the country without due process.
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