El Salvador’s Bukele suggests prisoner swap for Venezuelans deported by US | Migration News

El Salvador president says he is willing to repatriate deportees in exchange for release of ‘political prisoners.’

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has proposed a prisoner swap that would see Venezuelans deported from the United States to his country exchanged for “political prisoners” in Venezuela.

In pointed remarks directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday, Bukele suggested the countries reach a “humanitarian agreement” amid Caracas’s demands for the repatriation of Venezuelan deportees.

Bukele said he would be willing to repatriate 252 Venezuelans being held in a Salvadoran maximum security prison in exchange for “an identical number of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold”.

“Unlike our detainees, many of whom have committed murder, others have committed rape, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, your political prisoners have committed no crime. The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,” Bukele said on X.

Bukele went on to list a number of people being held in Venezuelan prisons, including Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of exiled former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, and Corina Parisca, the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab described Bukele’s proposal as “cynical” and called on his government to provide a complete list of the “hostages” along with “proof of life and a medical report” for each detainee.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has paid about $6m to Bukele’s government to detain accused Venezuelan gang members in El Salvador’s maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center.

The Trump administration has deported at least 261 migrants accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua and other gangs by controversially invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law that grants the president authority to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations.

US officials have released little evidence to support their claims that the deportees are members of criminal gangs, and media reports based on publicly available information have indicated that only a small minority have criminal records.

Maduro has accused Bukele of being an accomplice to “kidnapping” and called for the deportees to be repatriated to Venezuela.

On Saturday, the US Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to the deportations of migrants being held in Texas “until further order of this court”.

The 7-2 ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency petition asking the court to stop the Trump administration from proceeding with what it said were imminent plans to restart deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration could not continue the deportations without giving migrants a chance to challenge their removal in court.