<
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/we-were-kidnapped-prisoner-swap-venezuela-bukele-cecot-trump-ms13-deportation-el-salvador/>
"On Friday, María Daniela learned that her younger brother, Neri Alvarado
Borges, and more than 200 other Venezuelans sent by the Trump administration to
El Salvador were being released after spending more than four months in an
infamous prison. “Now it’s done,” María Daniela said in a call from Venezuela.
“Now we can say we are done with this nightmare.”
Alvarado’s case, which
Mother Jones reported on in March, was emblematic of
the cruelty of the Trump administration’s decision to send hundreds of
Venezuelans to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s Centro de Confinamiento del
Terrorismo (CECOT) prison. Like many others, Alvarado, who worked as a baker in
the Dallas area, appears to have been targeted simply because he was a
Venezuelan man with tattoos. It did not matter that his most prominent tattoo
was an autism awareness ribbon adorned with the name of his teenage brother.
The Venezuelans were released as part of a prisoner swap deal including 10
Americans. (The Venezuelan government has been reported to imprison foreign
nationals to gain diplomatic leverage.) The exchange comes after a previous
deal being negotiated fell through, and despite the Trump administration’s
insistence in court and in public statements that it did not have the power to
compel El Salvador to return the removed migrants to the United States. (Court
records show that Bukele’s government told the United Nations the men were
under the authority of the United States, contradicting the White House’s
claims.)
A relative shared a video from Venezuelan broadcaster
teleSUR featuring his
brother, Arturo Suárez, on the plane after it landed near Caracas. “We spent
four months without any contact with the outside world,” Suárez said. “We were
kidnapped.” He went on to say: “We got a beating for breakfast. We got a
beating for lunch. We got a beating for dinner.”
Family members of some of the Venezuelan men held at CECOT told
Mother Jones
they were relieved, but still heartbroken over what they consider a wrongful
detention. On Friday, families had been instructed by the Maduro government’s
office to go to the airport near Caracas to reunite with their relatives."
Via Joyce Donahue.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
