El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele proposed a prisoner swap with Venezuela, saying he would exchange the “political prisoners” held in Venezuela for the Venezuelans in his country’s custody.
“Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we have no political prisoners,” Bukele wrote to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a statement on X. “All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained in the framework of an operation against gangs such as the Aragua Train in the United States.”
“Unlike our detainees, many of whom have murdered, others have committed rapes, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, their political prisoners have committed no crime,” he wrote. “The only reason they are incarcerated is because they have opposed you and your electoral fraud.”
Bukele then offered a “humanitarian agreement” that “contemplates the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners that you maintain.”
Some of the political prisoners Bukele suggested should be released included Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, and “four political leaders assigned to the Argentine embassy.”
“The treatment received by Venezuelans in the United States and El Salvador, constitutes a serious violation of international human rights law and constitutes a crime against humanity,” Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.
Bukele’s proposal follows his recent meeting with President Trump, where he told reporters that he was “not going to” return a deported immigrant to the United States.
“How can I smuggle, how can I return him to the United States?” he asked. “I smuggle him into the United States? What do I do? Of course, I’m not going to do it.”
When asked if he could release the gang member inside El Salvador, Bukele responded, “Yeah, but I’m not releasing—I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.”
