Washington — Ten Americans are en route to the U.S. after a prisoner swap involving the U.S., El Salvador and Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday.
“Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom,” Rubio wrote on X.
The Americans were freed from Venezuela in exchange for El Salvador returning 252 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this year, senior administration officials said.
A former Navy SEAL, Wilbert Joseph Castaneda, is among the Americans released, three sources told CBS News. Castaneda was detained in Venezuela last year while on personal travel.
The U.S. Embassy in Venezuela posted a photo of the freed Americans:
U.S. Embassy in Venezuela
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wrote on X that his country “handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country, accused of being part of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua,” in exchange for “a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners … as well as all the American citizens it was holding as hostages.”
The Trump administration deported more than 200 male Venezuelan citizens to El Salvador in March, accusing them of being part of the transnational gang Tren De Aragua. President Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to order officials to quickly deport many of the Venezuelan migrants, deeming them a threat to the U.S.
In May, the Supreme Court extended a pause on deportations of Venezuelan migrants detained in northern Texas while they challenge their removals under the wartime law.
Some of the families of the Venezuelan deportees have denied that they have gang connections, and a “60 Minutes” investigation in April found that most of the detainees did not have criminal convictions.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
contributed to this report.