El Salvador President Nayib Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro for Venezuelan deportees

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele waves as he departs following a meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela on Sunday, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela.

In a post on the social media platform X, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the government’s electoral crackdown last year.

“The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote. “However, 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 surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold.”

It comes as El Salvador has come under sharp international scrutiny for accepting deportees from Venezuela and El Salvador deported by the Trump administration, which accused them of being alleged gang members with little evidence. Deportees are locked up in a “mega-prison” know as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), built by the Bukele government during his crackdown on the country’s gangs.

Controversy has only continued after it was revealed that an American citizen, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was among those deported, and court battles have broken out fighting over his return.

Criticisms continued on Sunday, with El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas calling on Bukele not “to allow our country to become a big international prison.”

Despite the controversy, Bukele on Sunday maintained that all of the people he has kept in the prison were “part of part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”

Marcos Aleman And Megan Janetsky, The Associated Press