Members of the Salvadorian army stand guard at maximum security penitentiary CECOT on April 4, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.
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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Venezuela has freed 10 Americans in exchange for Venezuelans whom the United States had sent to a prison in El Salvador, the U.S. and Salvadoran governments said Friday.
In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “the United States welcomes home ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela.”
“We also welcome the release of Venezuelan political prisoners and detainees that were also released from Venezuelan prisons,” the statement continued.
Earlier, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed the exchange in a message on X. He said his government handed over Venezuelans accused of being part of a gang in exchange for “a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners” as well as Americans.
He said the swap was the result of “months of negotiations with a tyrannical regime,” and added that U.S. officials had helped to arrange the deal.
Rubio wrote on X, “ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom.”
A list of names in the prisoner exchange has not been released.
A State Department official told NPR that the people freed from Venezuela included U.S. citizens and permanent residents who were designated as “wrongfully detained” less than a year ago, after Venezuelan elections. The official said they included Wilbert Joseph Castaneda and Lucas Hunter. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Venezuelan government accused Castañeda and others of participating in a plot to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, but provided no evidence.
In May the State Department issued a travel advisory saying that U.S. citizens who visit Venezuela face a “very high risk of wrongful detention.”
An X account belonging to the hostage affairs office at the State Department posted a photo of the men it said were released from detention in Venezuela on a plane.
In March, the Trump administration sent about 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, whose government was paid to house them in a maximum security prison, known as CECOT.
The United States accused many of the men of being gang members and deported them under the Alien Enemies Act, which had not been invoked since World War II.
Lawyers for the Venezuelan deportees argue their transfer to El Salvador was illegal. Dozens of them were in the middle of asylum cases, and had been held in U.S. detention centers for months.
On Friday, Bukele published a video of men in handcuffs he said were being handed over to Venezuela, as they boarded a plane taking them to the South American country.
Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country, accused of being part of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TDA). Many of them face multiple charges of murder, robbery, rape, and other serious crimes.
As was offered to the Venezuelan… pic.twitter.com/teuIT4GiRT
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 18, 2025
The prisoner swap was kept secret until Friday and some of the relatives of the Venezuelan migrants say they found out about it on social media.
Gabriela Mora, whose husband Carlos Uzcategui was one of the men sent by the U.S. to El Salvador, tells NPR she was at an event at her daughter’s school in Venezuela when she learned about the news.
“This makes us very happy,” she told NPR by phone from Lobatera, a town in Venezuela’s Tachira state. “We have waited for this day for too long.”
Uzcategui, a coal miner from Venezuela’s Tachira state, entered the U.S. in December after he received an appointment, through the U.S. government’s CBP One app, to cross the U.S. border and make his case for asylum.
He was then held in a detention center in Texas. U.S. immigration officials have alleged that tattoos of crowns and stars on his chest were linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Uzcategui’s family says he got the tattoos 15 years ago, before the gang had even been established.
“He is not a gang member,” Mora said in an interview in May. “Just a hard working man who wants to provide for his family.”
This is a developing story that may be updated.
NPR’s Michele Kelemen contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
