Migrants deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison sent to Venezuela in prison swap, Bukele says

(VENEZUELA) — The more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who were deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s mega-prison in March have left El Salvador to be sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap that included Americans being held in Venezuela, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced on X.

The deal included the release of 10 Americans held in Venezuela, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the result was that “every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.” In addition, the deal included the release of some “Venezuelan political prisoners and detainees” being held by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. said.

Regarding the return of Venezuelan migrants being held in the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, Bukele said in the post on X: “Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country, accused of being part of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. As was offered to the Venezuelan regime back in April, we carried out this exchange in return for a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners, people that regime had kept in its prisons for years, as well as all the American citizens it was holding as hostages.”

Bukele’s post on X included a video of what appears to be the deportees boarding a plane.

In a statement, Venezuela’s government confirmed the release of 252 prisoners from CECOT.

The Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador after the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.

Many families and attorneys of the Venezuelans have denied they have gang ties and in April an official for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a sworn declaration submitted in federal court that many of the noncitizens who were deported did not have criminal records in the United States.

“While it is true that many of the [Tren de Aragua gang] members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” the official said in the filing in March.

The migrants were sent to CECOT as part of a $6 million deal the Trump administration made with Bukele to house migrant detainees as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Over the past several months, Trump and administration officials said they were unable to return any of the migrants sent to CECOT because the migrants were under El Salvador’s authority.

But in court filings submitted last month, the government of El Salvador told a United Nations working group that the Venezuelans sent to CECOT were the responsibility of the United States.

In a statement to ABC News, Lee Gelernt, lead counsel in the CECOT litigation for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the administration appears to be “trying to avoid all judicial accountability.”

“The administration sent these individuals to languish for months incommunicado in one of the most notorious prisons in the world without any due process and now appears to with this latest maneuver to be trying to avoid all judicial accountability,” Gelernt said.

In a court filing late Friday night following the announcement of the swap, the Trump administration said it would now facilitate the return of former CECOT detainees to the U.S. from Venezuela, if required to do so by a court.

In a status report, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said the Maduro regime has made assurances it will not stand in the way if a former detainee is required to return to the U.S. The report was submitted hours after the prisoner swap was announced.

Americans included in the swap

Five U.S. citizens and five U.S. permanent residents who had been unlawfully detained in Venezuela were released in a prisoner exchange, according to the group Hostage Aid Worldwide.

They include Renzo Huamanchumo, Jorge Marcelo Vargas, Lucas Hunter, Wilbert Castaneda, Jonathan Pagan Gonzalez and Fabian Buglione Reyes, according to the group. They were detained between August 2024 and January 2025, it said.

“This is a moment of great relief and gratitude,” Hostage Aid President Nizar Zakka said in a statement. “Our hearts are filled with joy that these men will finally reunite with their families. We commend the Trump Administration for its diligent and continued efforts to bring Americans unlawfully detained abroad home.”

The Bring Our Families Home Campaign also confirmed that Hunter, Vargas and Castaneda are among the Americans included in the swap. In a post on X, the group thanked Trump and U.S. officials it says “stayed true to [their] word” in securing the Americans’ release.

Castaneda is an active-duty U.S. Navy SEAL who was detained in September 2024 following personal travel to Venezuela. He was accused of leading a CIA-linked plot to overthrow Maduro, which the State Department has called “categorically false.”

The State Department’s Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs shared a photo on X of the Americans on a plane headed back to the U.S. with American flags.

“Until today, more Americans were wrongfully held in Venezuela than any other country in the world,” Rubio said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that Venezuelan regime representatives arrested and jailed U.S. nationals under highly questionable circumstances and without proper due process.”

ABC News’ Shannon Kingston and Aicha Elhammar contributed to this report.

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