'252 for 252': El Salvador's Nayib Bukele seeks 'prisoner swap' with Venezuela

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele reached out to his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro on Sunday, and proposed a "prisoner exchange" between the two countries.

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Bukele suggested he would send the 252 Venezuela ns deported from the United States to and detained in El Salvador, back to Venezuela. In return, he said, Maduro would have to free an equal number of "political prisoners" and send them to El Salvador.

Bukele wrote on social media platform X, "Mr. @NicolasMaduro, you have said on numerous occasions that you want the Venezuelans back and free. Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we don't have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States."

Señor @NicolasMaduro, usted ha dicho en numerosas ocasiones que quiere a los venezolanos de regreso y en libertad.

A diferencia de usted, que tiene presos políticos, nosotros no tenemos presos políticos. Todos los venezolanos que tenemos bajo custodia fueron detenidos en el…

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 20, 2025

He added, "Unlike our detainees, many of whom have committed murder, others have committed rape, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, your political prisoners have committed no crime. The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud."

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According to the Salvadoran leader, if Maduro were to accept the offer, the 252 "political prisoners" to be released and sent from Venezuela must include: Rafael Tudares (son-in-law of Venezuela's opposition leader and former presidential candidate Edmundo González), lawyer-activist Rocío San Miguel, Corina Parisca de Machado (mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado), the "four political leaders seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy," and others.

"Also included are the nearly 50 detained citizens of other nationalities: American, German, Dominican, Argentine, Bolivian, Israeli, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Spanish, French, Guyanese, Dutch, Iranian, Italian, Lebanese, Mexican, Peruvian, Puerto Rican, Ukrainian, Uruguayan, Portuguese, and Czech," Bukele said, adding that El Salvador's foreign ministry would soon send a formal correspondence.

The "offer" comes even as El Salvador has come under sharp international scrutiny for accepting Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported from America by the Donald Trump administration, which accused them of being "gang members." 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.

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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.

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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.”