Salvadoran President Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro for Venezuelan deportees

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele mentioned he would ask El Salvador’s Overseas Ministry to keep up a correspondence with the Maduro Authorities, which didn’t instantly reply to the put up. File
| Photograph Credit score: AP

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed finishing up a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday (April 20, 2025), suggesting he would alternate Venezuelan deportees from the USA his authorities has saved imprisoned for what he referred to as “political prisoners” in Venezuela.

In a put up on the social media platform X, directed at President Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Bukele listed off quite a lot of members of the family of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained throughout the South American Authorities’s electoral crackdown final yr.

“The one cause they’re imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Mr. Maduro. “Nonetheless, I need to suggest a humanitarian settlement that features the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who had been deported, in alternate for the discharge and give up of an an identical quantity (252) of the 1000’s of political prisoners you maintain,” he wrote.

Amongst these he listed had been the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, quite a lot of political leaders searching for asylum within the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he mentioned had been 50 detained residents from quite a lot of totally different nations internationally. Mr. Bukele additionally listed the mom of opposition chief María Corina Machado, whose home the political chief has mentioned was surrounded by Venezuelan police in January.

Mr. Bukele mentioned he would ask El Salvador’s Overseas Ministry to keep up a correspondence with the Maduro Authorities, which didn’t instantly reply to the put up.

The proposal comes as El Salvador has come below sharp worldwide scrutiny for accepting Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported by the Trump administration, which accused them of being alleged gang members with little proof. Deportees are locked up in a “mega-prison” often called the Terrorism Confinement Heart (CECOT), constructed by the Bukele Authorities throughout his crackdown on the nation’s gangs.

Controversy has solely continued after it was revealed {that a} Maryland father married to a U.S. citizen, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was amongst these deported, and courtroom battles have damaged out preventing over his return.

El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas on Sunday (April 20, 2025) referred to as on Mr. Bukele not “to permit our nation to change into an enormous worldwide jail.”

Regardless of the controversy, Mr. Bukele maintained that the entire folks he has saved in jail had been “a part of a part of an operation in opposition to gangs just like the Tren de Aragua in the USA.”