Cecot Prison - Nicolas Maduro.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday publicly urged Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to release and repatriate 238 Venezuelan migrants deported by the United States and currently detained in El Salvador—escalating diplomatic tensions between the three nations.
Maduro called on Bukele to refuse cooperation with what he described as a “kidnapping operation” orchestrated by U.S. authorities.
He insisted the migrants, now held at El Salvador’s high-security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), had committed no crimes and were wrongfully deported.
“Let Nayib Bukele not be complicit in this kidnapping, because our boys committed no crime in the United States—none,” said Maduro.
They were not brought to trial; they were not given the right to a defense or due process; they were tricked, handcuffed, put on a plane, kidnapped, and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Nicolas Maduro
Maduro claimed the U.S. deportations were carried out under false pretenses, rejecting Washington’s assertion that the individuals were members of the El Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization recently designated as a terrorist group by U.S. authorities.
Along with the Venezuelans, 23 Salvadorans were also deported and placed in CECOT, reportedly as part of a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and El Salvador.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declared that it had conducted extensive background checks to ensure those deported were linked to criminal networks. However, no formal evidence has been presented publicly.
The mass deportations sparked protests across Venezuela. On Tuesday, people took to the streets in Caracas, accusing the U.S. of treating innocent migrants like criminals and demanding their relatives be set free.
Some protestors declared to have identified family members among those detained and denied any ties to organized crime.
Maduro demanded that El Salvador send the deportees back as soon as possible. So far, neither the Salvadoran government nor the U.S. State Department has said anything in response.
