Photo released by the presidency of Nayib Bukele when 250 Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. were sent to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador.
Guacamaya, July 18, 2025. The governments of the United States and Venezuela are reportedly in the process of carrying out a prisoner exchange, involving migrants deported to El Salvador and American citizens.
On one side, nearly all Venezuelans who were deported to El Salvador and imprisoned in the CECOT mega-prison are being repatriated. Meanwhile, Caracas is set to release U.S. citizens whom its government describes as “unjustly detained.”
There has also been talk of the possibility that Venezuelan political figures and citizens of other countries detained in Venezuela may be included in the exchange.
This agreement comes after negotiations between the U.S. State Department, led by Marco Rubio, on one side, and Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, on the other.
According to an exclusive report from The New York Times, Rubio and Trump’s presidential envoy, Richard Grenell, attempted to negotiate the simultaneous release of their respective nationals without mutual cooperation. The latter had already succeeded in repatriating several U.S. citizens from Venezuela, as well as resuming flights to deport illegal immigrants.
However, Rubio and his allies put an end to Grenell’s attempt to maintain a licensing scheme favoring Western oil companies in Venezuela over China.
We are following this story minute by minute, so this article will be updated.
