Three-Country Deal Trades 10 Americans for Deportees

Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans on Friday in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the US to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration's immigration policies, officials said. The three-country arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad, and provides El Salvador a swap that its president had proposed months ago, the AP reports. "Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said his country had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. The Venezuelan government said it had paid a "steep price" by having to release the US nationals but was pleased to have its own jailed citizens back. Central to the deal are the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants being freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in a notorious Salvadoran prison. The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang. The administration did not provide evidence to back those claims.

Among the Americans freed Friday was 37-year-old Lucas Hunter, whose family says he was kidnapped in January by Venezuelan border guards from inside Colombia, where he was vacationing. "We cannot wait to see him in person and help him recover from the ordeal," said his younger sister Sophie Hunter. "We have prayed for this day for almost a year. My brother is an innocent man who was used as a political pawn by the Maduro regime, said a statement from Christian Casteneda, whose brother Wilbert, a Navy SEAL, was arrested in his Caracas hotel room last year. Global Reach, a nonprofit organization that had advocated for his release and that of several other Americans, said Venezuelan officials initially and falsely accused him of being involved in a coup but backed off that claim.