El Salvador offers Venezuela prisoner swap involving US deportees

El Salvador’s president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in his country – if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners.

Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media.

He said many of the Venezuelan deportees had committed “rape and murder”, while Venezuelan political prisoners were jailed only because they opposed Maduro, whose re-election last year is widely disputed.

Later Venezuela’s chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab criticised Bukele’s proposal. He demanded to know what crimes the deportees were accused of, whether they had appeared before a judge or had access to legal counsel.

The Venezuelan government argues that it has no political prisoners – a claim rejected by rights groups.

In a post on X, Bukele wrote: “I want to propose you [Maduro] a humanitarian agreement calling for the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release… of the identical number from among the thousands of political prisoners that you hold”.

He also mentioned nearly 50 prisoners of other nationalities, including US citizens, as part of the proposed swap.

​In recent weeks, more than 200 Venezuelans were sent from the US to El Salvador.

President Donald Trump’s administration accuses them of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

Washington pays El Salvador to keep those deported in its notorious high-security Terrorism Confinement Center.

Bukele calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and won re-election last year riding a wave of popularity for a sweeping anti-gang crackdown.

Maduro has condemned the US deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador, describing it as “kidnapping” and a “massive abuse” of human rights.

Since taking office in January, Trump’s hard-line immigration policies have encountered a number of legal hurdles.

In the latest development, the US Supreme Court on Saturday ordered Washington to pause the deportation of another group of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The White House has called challenges to using the law for mass deportations “meritless litigation”.

Trump has sent accused Venezuelan gang members under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president power to detain and deport natives or citizens of “enemy” nations without usual processes.

The act was previously used only three times, all during war.