President Nayib Bukele.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — In a bold diplomatic overture, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed a prisoner swap with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro: 252 deported Venezuelans currently held in El Salvador’s high-security prison in exchange for the release of 252 political prisoners from Venezuelan jails.
Bukele made the proposal public in a post on X, formerly Twitter, framing it as a “humanitarian agreement” and pledging that El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry would formalize the offer through official diplomatic channels.
“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 delivery of an identical number of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” Bukele wrote.
Bukele requested the release of journalist Roland Carreño, human rights lawyer Rocío San Miguel, and Corina Parisca de Machado, the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado.
He also called for the release of four political activists currently seeking asylum at the Argentine Embassy in Caracas and dozens of political prisoners from other nationalities, including American, German, French, and Ukrainian citizens.
Bukele emphasized the distinction between the detainees held in El Salvador and those imprisoned in Venezuela.
“Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we do not have political prisoners,” Bukele told Maduro. “All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like Tren de Aragua in the United States.”
The 252 Venezuelans in question were deported by U.S. authorities and subsequently incarcerated at El Salvador’s Center for Confinement Against Terrorism (CECOT), a maximum-security facility built to detain alleged gang members.
Human Rights Watch and U.S. Democratic lawmakers have criticized the detentions, citing concerns over due process and alleging forced disappearances.
Bukele maintained that the detainees in CECOT include individuals with serious criminal histories, including murder and sexual assault, and claimed some had been arrested multiple times in the United States before their deportation.
“In contrast, your political prisoners have not committed any crimes. The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,” said Bukele.
Thus far, the Maduro government has not responded publicly to Bukele’s proposal.
