CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s attorney general’s office said on Monday that it has opened an investigation into El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele for alleged mistreatment and human rights violations against Venezuelan migrants.
The migrants in question spent months detained in a maximum-security prison in the Central American country after being deported by the United States.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said his office decided to open the probe after some of the migrants informed Venezuelan authorities of the alleged mistreatment. The investigation includes El Salvador’s Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro and the head of the prison system, Osiris Luna.
More than 250 migrants were held since March in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which was built to hold alleged gang members in Bukele’s war on the country’s gangs.
They were released on Friday by El Salvador in exchange for 10 U.S. nationals jailed in Venezuela, and as part of a three-country arrangement.
Bukele’s office didn’t reply immediately to a request for comment.
Men Deported Trump Deported Cried, Hugged One Another
Venezuela on Friday released the 10 jailed U.S. citizens and permanent residents in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, officials said.
The complex, three-country arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a swap that he proposed months ago.
“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked Bukele, a Trump ally.
Bukele said El Salvador had handed over all the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. Maduro described Friday as “a day of blessings and good news for Venezuela.” He called it “the perfect day for Venezuela.”
Central to the deal were the more than 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in its notorious prison.
That arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove the men that his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang, teeing up a legal fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration did not provide evidence to back up those claims.
After arriving in Venezuela, some of the migrants crossed themselves, cried and hugged one another. They wore face masks and street clothes.
Maduro alleged that some of them were subjected to various forms of abuse at the Salvadoran prison, and one of them even lost a kidney “due to the beatings he received.”
Makeup Artist Among Released Prisoners
Andry Hernández Romero, a makeup artist from Venezuela who was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration and held in a notorious mega-prison, was among the scores of migrants sent back to Venezuela in a three-nation exchange Friday, a California congressman said.
Rep. Robert Garcia posted on social media Friday night: “We have been in touch with Andry Hernández Romero’s legal team and they have confirmed he is out of CECOT and back in Venezuela. We are grateful he is alive and are engaged with both the State Department and his team.”
Romero, a gay man, fled Venezuela last summer and sought asylum in the U.S. He used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection phone app to arrange an appointment at a U.S. border crossing in San Diego.
That’s where he was asked about his tattoos. U.S. immigration authorities use a series of “gang identifiers” to help them spot members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Romero, who is in his early 20s, has a crown tattooed on each wrist. One is next to the word “Mom.” The other next to “Dad.” The crowns, according to his lawyer, also pay homage to his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and to his work in beauty pageants, where crowns are common.
Romero, who insisted he has no ties to Tren, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and transferred to a California detention center. He was eventually flown to CECOT amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
