El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has officially received the ten American citizens released by Nicolás Maduro’s regime, marking the conclusion of a complex and unprecedented humanitarian operation involving the exchange of prisoners between El Salvador, Venezuela, and the United States.
The Americans arrived in El Salvador just hours after departing Caracas aboard a special flight. President Bukele greeted them upon arrival, expressing his solidarity and emphasizing the significance of the operation, which he first proposed in April.
As part of the agreement, Bukele offered to exchange all 252 members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization—held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—for political prisoners imprisoned in Venezuela. “We carried out this exchange in return for a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners—people the regime had held in its jails for years—as well as all the American citizens it had kidnapped,” Bukele stated on Friday.
According to official reports, 80 Venezuelan opposition members were released alongside the ten Americans. The Tren de Aragua members involved in the exchange had previously been deported from the United States under its zero-tolerance policy against terrorism and transnational crime, initiated by former President Donald Trump. Many of these individuals face ongoing legal proceedings in Venezuela.
In response to the transfer, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry expressed satisfaction with the repatriation of its nationals, referring to them as “victims of forced disappearance.” The ministry also acknowledged the cost of the agreement, stating that the Maduro regime had “paid a high price to secure the freedom of these compatriots, through an exchange with U.S. authorities of a group of American citizens who were at the mercy of justice.”
The operation marks a new chapter in regional diplomacy, with El Salvador playing a decisive role in securing a humanitarian outcome through negotiation and international cooperation.