Salvadoran President Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro for
Venezuelan deportees
[April 21, 2025]
By MARCOS ALEMAN and MEGAN JANETSKY
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele
proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday,
suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States
his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political
prisoners” in Venezuela.
In a post on the social media platform X, directed at President Nicolás
Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level
opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained
during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year.
“The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your
electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a
humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252
Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender
of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you
hold.”
Among those he listed were the son-in-law of former Venezuelan
presidential candidate Edmundo González, a number of political leaders
seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy in Venezuela, and what he said
were 50 detained citizens from a number of different countries across
the world. Bukele also listed the mother of opposition leader María
Corina Machado, whose house the political leader has said was surrounded
by Venezuelan police in January.
Bukele said he would ask El Salvador’s foreign ministry to be in contact
with the Maduro government.
Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office responded Sunday night, calling Bukele’s
statements “cynical” and referred to the Salvadoran leader as a “neofascist.”
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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele waves as he departs following a
meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump, Monday,
April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
It demanded Bukele’s government provide the Venezuelan government with a
list of the people detained as well as their legal status and medical
reports.
“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,” it said in the statement.
The proposal comes as El Salvador has come under sharp international
scrutiny for accepting Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported by the Trump
administration, which accused them of being alleged gang members with
little evidence. Deportees are locked up in a “mega-prison” know as the
Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), built by the Bukele government
during his crackdown on the country’s gangs.
Controversy has only continued after it was revealed that a Maryland
father married to a U.S. citizen, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported by
mistake. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the U.S. government to
facilitate his return, but there’s no sign of that happening.
El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas on Sunday called on
Bukele not “to allow our country to become a big international prison.”
Despite the controversy, Bukele maintained that all of the people he has
kept in the prison were “part of part of an operation against gangs like
the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”
___
Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
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