‘Prayed for this day’: 10 Americans freed from Venezuelan prison in prisoner exchange programme; El Salvador releases over 200 Venezuelans

Ten Americans are on their manner again to the US following a prisoner exchange involving the United States, El Salvador, and Venezuela, US secretary of state Marco Rubio introduced Friday.As a part of the prisoner exchange, greater than 200 Venezuelan migrants, who had been deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration have left the Central American nation and are set to be despatched to Venezuela, reported ABC News.“Until today, more Americans were wrongfully held in Venezuela than any other country in the world, ” Rubio acknowledged. “Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” he added. Wilbert Joseph Castaneda, a former Navy SEAL is among the many Americans who had been launched, as per CBS News. He was detained in Venezuela final yr whereas he was travelling in the nation for private causes. “We have prayed for this day for almost a year. My brother is an innocent man who was used as a political pawn by the Maduro regime,” Castaneda’s household acknowledged. Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele posted 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 (TDA). Many of them face multiple charges of murder, robbery, rape, and other serious crimes. 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.These individuals are now en route to El Salvador, where they will make a brief stop before continuing their journey home,” he stated referring to the discharge of Venezuelan migrants being detained in the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. The Venezuelans had been transferred to El Salvador after the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime legislation permitting for the elimination of noncitizens with minimal due course of. Using the act, US authorities deported two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua capabilities as a “hybrid criminal state” making an attempt to infiltrate the US, as per ABC News. Many of the deportees’ households and attorneys have denied their alliance with the gang and an ICE official acknowledged in a sworn federal court docket declaration that quite a few deported people didn’t have any felony data in the US.The migrants had been transferred to CECOT earlier this yr below a $6 million settlement between the Trump administration and Salvadoran President Bukele, aimed toward housing migrant detainees as a part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown.