After Nayib Bukele proposed exchanging 252 Venezuelan migrants, sent by Donald Trump to El Salvador’s prisons, for an equal number of political prisoners in Venezuela, the chief prosecutor of Venezuela labelled the El Salvador president a “tyrannical” human trafficker.
Bukele made the offer in direct communication to his dictatorial counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, on Sunday evening. “In exchange for the release and transfer of the same number of political prisoners you currently hold, the leader of El Salvador proposed a humanitarian agreement that would facilitate the complete repatriation of all 252 Venezuelans deported.”
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, one of Maduro’s closest friends, rejected the plan hours later. In a televised speech, Saab asserted that the Salvadorian’s “cynical” offer revealed him as a narcissistic “neo-Nazi” who had “kidnapped” over 250 Venezuelan migrants who had been detained by the Trump administration since mid-March in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Saab referred to the politician’s “horrifying” three-year anti-gang campaign, in which at least 85,000 Salvadorans were imprisoned, mainly without due process, as evidence that Bukele is a serial human rights violation. More than 360 inmates have perished, according to human rights groups.
Some opposition figures in Venezuela, still in shock over their inability to overthrow Maduro despite appearing to defeat him in the July presidential election, embraced Bukele’s offer. The initiative has his “full support,” according to opposition leader Leopoldo López, who is now living in exile in Spain. María Corina Machado, the key figure in the opposition, did not immediately respond.
Many human rights and political activists, however, have expressed their shock and confusion that the Venezuelan migrants detained in El Salvador—who were denied due process in the United States and sent to a foreign authoritarian country—have become entangled in the political struggle between strongman populists like Maduro, Trump, and Bukele.
“Anyone who genuinely cares about human rights should find the idea of a [prisoner] trade abhorrent,” stated Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The suffering of the Venezuelans detained in El Salvador and Bukele’s prisoner swap “PR stunt” may be advantageous for both Bukele and Maduro, according to Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela specialist at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
Ramsey stated, “Maduro is quite happy to quarrel with Bukele and bring up human rights violations in El Salvador as a diversion from the violent and brutal repression of his own regime.” About 900 political prisoners are presently detained in Maduro’s jails, according to the human rights organization Foro Penal. Following last year’s election, Maduro, who has been in office since 2013, launched a crackdown that resulted in thousands of people being imprisoned in an attempt to prevent Edmundo González, his apparent victor, from becoming power.
According to Bukele, the offer was “a clever way of drawing the conversation back to the existence of political prisoners in Venezuela and away from concerns about the deportees being held in El Salvador,” Ramsay said.
The repercussions for the refugees ensnared in the geopolitical detentions are disastrous. The length of their detention is unknown, and many have not been found guilty of any crimes.
The wife of one Venezuelan prisoner, Arturo Suárez Trejo, a musician, bemoaned in an interview last week how the Venezuelan inmates appeared to have turned into participants in a high-stakes game of chess. Nathali Sánchez denied allegations that her child’s father had engaged in criminal activity, saying, “And they are the pawns.” “It’s evil,” she continued.
Venezuela’s opposition is in a tough position as a result of the Trump administration’s targeting of Venezuelan migrants, whom it has accused of being terrorists and gang members, mostly without proof.
Its top officials, including Machado, have remained silent on the migratory crackdown and the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador, seemingly out of concern for upsetting Trump’s administration. Because of its overarching objective of winning the White House’s assistance for its preferred plan [to overthrow Maduro], the opposition has mainly remained silent on matters pertaining to the treatment of fellow citizens, which Sabatini argued is equally unacceptable.
The opposition’s inability to protect the imprisoned migrants is infuriating and frustrating their friends and family, many of whom are opposition supporters who left Venezuela to avoid Maduro’s rule.
“In actuality, the Venezuelan opposition must maintain a positive relationship with the White House, and they are aware that they cannot be seen as disparaging Trump,” Ramsey stated. However, the circumstances endured by individuals who have been deported and sent to this highest security prison in El Salvador have angered the Venezuelan population. Thus, it truly places the opposition in a difficult situation.
