Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government is keeping imprisoned for what he calls “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 Bukele proposed for release were the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, journalist Roland Carreno, human rights lawyer Rocio San Miguel, and Corina Parisca de Machado, mother of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who he said is subjected to daily threats at her home.
He also mentioned a number of political leaders seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy in Venezuela and nearly 50 detainees of other nationalities, including US, German and French citizens, as part of the proposed exchange.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab criticised Bukele's proposal and accused El Salvador of unlawfully detaining 252 Venezuelans.
In a statement, Saab demanded to know what crimes the detainees are accused of, whether they have appeared before a judge, have access to legal counsel, or have been allowed to contact family members.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. – file
The proposal comes as El Salvador has come under sharp international scrutiny for accepting Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported by the US.
Last month, the administration of President Donald Trump deported at least 200 Venezuelans from the United States to El Salvador, accusing them of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. The US is paying El Salvador $6 million to detain the migrants in its high-security “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 US citizen, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was among those deported, and court battles have broken out fighting over his return.
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”.
The Venezuelan government has said it has no political prisoners and that imprisoned people have been convicted of crimes. However, non-governmental organisations claim that more than 800 people are detained for political reasons.
The Venezuelan government has denied that the Venezuelans deported by the US have gang affiliations. Lawyers and family members of the detainees have also asserted that the migrants have no ties to criminal groups.
Saab described El Salvador's CECOT prison as "no longer a torture centre ... but a place of forced disappearance of innocent Venezuelan nationals".
He added he would formally request a full list of the detainees, their legal status, and medical reports for each one, and urged international organisations to call for their immediate release.
On Saturday, the US Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting another group of Venezuelan migrants accused of gang ties under a rarely used wartime law, issuing a stay after the American Civil Liberties Union asked the court to intervene on an emergency basis.
The Trump administration pressed the Supreme Court to reject the ACLU's request on the migrants' behalf, once they review the matter further. White House officials said the president remains committed to his immigration crackdown, but gave no indication the administration would defy the court's decision.