MAIQUETIA, Venezuela: Hundreds of Venezuelans swept up in Donald Trump’s immigration dragnet were abruptly freed from a maximum security Salvadoran jail and sent home as part of a prisoner swap Friday, ending a months-long high-profile ordeal.
The 252 men were accused – without evidence – of being gang members and flown to the notorious CECOT “anti-terror” jail last March.
There, they were shackled, shorn and paraded before cameras – becoming emblematic of Trump’s immigration crackdown and drawing howls of protest.
On Friday, after months of legal challenges and political stonewalling, the men arrived at an airport near Caracas.
The Trump administration said they were released in exchange for 10 Americans or US residents held in Venezuela, and an undefined number of “political prisoners.”
“Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on social media.
The migrants’ return to Venezuela sparked tearful celebrations from family members who had heard nothing from them in months.
“I don’t have words to explain how I feel!” said Juan Yamarte. “My brother (Mervin) is back home, back in Venezuela.”
Mervin’s mother said she could not contain her happiness. “I arranged a party and I’m making a soup,” she said.
The men had been deported from the United States under rarely used wartime powers and denied court hearings.
Exiled Salvadoran rights group Cristosal believes that just seven of the 252 men had criminal records.
Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro thanked Trump for “the decision to rectify this totally irregular situation.”
In the United States, families were also excited to see their loved ones return. One had been imprisoned for nearly a year.
Global Reach, an NGO that works for wrongly detained Americans, said one of the men freed was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, held since he was “kidnapped” by Venezuelan border guards while vacationing in Colombia in January.
“We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal,” it quoted his younger sister Sophie Hunter as saying.
Uruguay said one of its citizens, resident in the United States, was among those liberated after nine months in Venezuelan detention.
Another plane arrived at Maiquetia airport earlier Friday from Houston with 244 Venezuelans deported from the United States and seven children who Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said had been “rescued from the kidnapping to which they were being subjected.”
The children were among 30 who Caracas says remained in the US after their Venezuelan parents were deported.
Clamping down on migrants is a flagship pursuit of Trump’s administration, which has ramped up raids and deportations.
It has agreed with Maduro to send undocumented Venezuelans back home, and flights have been arriving near daily also from Mexico, where many got stuck trying to enter the United States.
Official figures show that since February, more than 8,200 people have been repatriated to Venezuela from the United States and Mexico, including some 1,000 children.
The Venezuelans detained in El Salvador had no right to phone calls or visits, and their relatives unsuccessfully requested proof of life.
Bukele had CECOT built as part of his war on criminal gangs, but he agreed to receive millions of dollars from the United States to house the Venezuelans there.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have denounced the detentions as a violation of human rights.
