The more than 250 Venezuelan migrants illegally deported to El Salvador from the United States under the argument of belonging to the criminal organization of the Aragua Train have become a kind of currency for the Nayib Bukele government. The Salvadoran president proposed on Sunday to his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, an exchange of “political prisoners”, that is, those who remain in the megacárcel created in 2023 and officially known as the center of confinement of terrorism (CECOT), in exchange for prisoners that are in Venezuela, among them many close to the opposition. Caracas has rejected the proposal on Monday by qualifying it as “cynical”.
In a statement published by Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, the Public Ministry has csolicited the “immediate release” of migrants that the Savior keeps detained. Saab has assured that the CECOT is “a place of forced disappearance of innocent of Venezuelan nationality (…) who, as an expert in traffic with human beings, [Bukele] Use to receive millionaire sums of money. ”For receiving those deported by the US government, El Salvador receives compensation of six million dollars (just over five million euros).
Saab, who made no reference to legal status, the circumstances in which they are imprisoned or the whereabouts of some of the Venezuelan political prisoners, says he communicated his concern about the situation of migrants to Volker Türk, high commissioner of the United Nations, who in turn repeatedly has reached requests to Caracas to free the political prisoners arrested arbitrarily.
“Unlike our detainees, many of whom have murdered, others have committed violations, and some had even been arrested multiple times before being deported, their political prisoners have not committed any crime,” said the president of El Salvador in his Sunday message. In turn, Bukele asked his Venezuelan counterpart “the release and delivery of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners”, among which, they said, are Rafael Tudares, son -in -law of the opposition candidate Edmundo González and who the Venezuelan authorities accuse of being linked to drug trafficking networks; the journalist and leader of the Popular Will party, Roland Carreño, and lawyer Rocío San Miguel ,.
The number of political prisoners in Venezuela multiplied by four after the protests after the presidential elections of July 28, in which the opposition ensures that it beat and that Maduro’s triumph is nothing more than a fraudulent victory. Between August and September of last year, Venezuela came to have 1,500 political prisoners. Towards December, the Chavista authorities began to review judicial cases and an release of several dozens of people occurred.
For their part, the relatives of the Venezuelan citizens detained in the CECOT have barely had news of them since their deportation by the US government. Several of the migrants notified them before climbing the plane that they would be expelled to Venezuela, after which they appeared in El Salvador. Relatives of the deportees have rejected the accusations that link migrants deported with the Aragua train – and the Miraflores Palace has organized public acts and demonstrations to demand their release.
The deportation of Venezuelan citizens to the CECOT of El Salvador from the United States has produced reactions found among many public figures in Venezuela. The most critical opposition sectors with María Corina Machado – who remains the leader with more force among the critics of Chavismo – recriminated his neutral position on this issue, qualifying her as a subordinate to Donald Trump. Machado has responded that he makes all possible efforts to save the fate of innocent prisoners, but he has said that it is not an issue that should be publicly resolved so that the effort can be effective.
President Bukele has been in the region. On April 14, where he reaffirmed his commitment to receive more deported migrants in El Salvador and rejected the possibility of returning to the United States to Kilmar Armando Abrego García, a Salvadoran construction worker who had been in the country for 14 years and was deported by mistake to his country of origin. “How am I getting smuggled with a terrorist in the United States? Of course, I will not do it,” Bukele said in the Oval Office, despite the fact that the judicial authorities have not proven the alleged links of Abrego with the Mara Salvatrucha, one of the gangs to which Bukele has declared the war.
Various organizations have denounced the repeated violations of human rights that occur in Salvadoran prisons since the arrival of Nayib Bukele to the Presidency. Chrysal, has documented the death of dozens of prisoners for torture, blows or mechanical asphyxiation due to strangulation. In the CECOT – prison they have visited, and – hundreds of people remain detained for such a diffuse issue as the “illegal association” or by having tattoos.
