Bukele offers to exchange Trump’s Venezuelan deportees for Maduro’s political prisoners
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed to Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro an exchange of 252 recently deported Venezuelans held in the Central American country for the same number of political prisoners held by Caracas’ socialist regime.
Maduro’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, dismissed the proposal as “cynical” and demanded proof of life, a comprehensive list of the detained individuals, and detailed information about the judicial status and medical conditions of the Venezuelans deportees held at a notorious Salvadoran mega prison.
Bukele made the offer via X on Sunday afternoon, directly addressing Maduro, who remains in power despite claims that he lost July’s presidential election. The Salvadoran president claimed the deported Venezuelans were involved in gang activity, while asserting that the political prisoners in Venezuela are innocent victims of repression.
The Bukele administration, which has aligned itself with U.S. President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration stance, has received 288 deportees —most of them Venezuelan— in the past few weeks. These individuals are currently being held in the country’s massive maximum-security facility, the Terrorism Confinement Center — CECOT, from its initials in Spanish — which can house up to 40,000 inmates.
In his message to Maduro, Bukele emphasized the alleged criminal backgrounds of the deported Venezuelans and reiterated his claim that Maduro’s political prisoners are jailed solely for opposing his regime.
The proposed exchange includes several high-profile detainees, such as renown journalist Roland Carreño, human-rights activist Rocío San Miguel and Rafael Tudares, the son in law of opposition leader Edmundo González, who most Venezuelans and a large number of countries, including the United States, believe was the real winner of July’s presidential election.
In his X message, Bukele also asked for a number of opposition figures who sought refuge inside Argentina’s embassy in Venezuela, 50 people of other nationalities arrested by the regime and the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado, Corina Parisca de Machado, who according to the Salvadoran president is being harassed by officials who cut off er access to water and electricity.
Maduro, whose regime has long been accused of committing crimes against humanity by international human rights organizations, launched a new wave of repression following July’s contested presidential election, which the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans believed he lost to Gonzalez by a margin of 2-1.
Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, including protesters, opposition figures, journalists and human rights activists. At least 28 people were confirmed dead, and over 200 were injured during the crackdown. Human rights organizations report that the actual death toll is likely much higher, with some victims allegedly tortured to death in custody.
The deportations to El Salvador stem from Trump’s recent invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which resulted in the expulsion of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants to the Central American nation, where they were placed at CECOT, a maximum-security prison designed as part of Bukele’s broader crackdown on crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily halted the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador and ordered the U.S. government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego, a Salvadoran migrant who was deported by mistake. Despite the ruling, the Trump administration has refused to process Ábrego’s return—a decision supported by Bukele.
Bukele has cultivated a notably close relationship with Trump, a partnership that has influenced many of his domestic and foreign policy decisions. While Bukele initially maintained a pragmatic relationship with both Republican and Democratic administrations, his alignment with Trump became increasingly pronounced in the last few months.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 11:55 AM.
