Like his sugardaddy, Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, likes to take American hostages for use as bargaining chips. He's got a lot of them in his many dungeons.
So surprise, surprise, he's traded a lot of them:
Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country, accused of being part of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TDA). Many of them face multiple charges of murder, robbery, rape, and other serious crimes.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 18, 2025
As was offered to the Venezuelan… pic.twitter.com/teuIT4GiRT
Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 18, 2025
I want to thank my team at the @StateDept & especially President @nayibbukele for helping secure an agreement for the release of all of our American detainees, plus the…
According to ABC News:
Based on this dirtbag parade, there's little doubt these people were dyed-in-the-wool criminals, despite the claims in the media that they had "no criminal records" -- look how proud they are of their gang signals on the way out:
Dentro del grupo de liberados y enviados a Venezuela desde el CECOT, estaría Yonel Toro Noguera, ex CICPC buscado por el asesinato de CANSERBERO.https://t.co/oXqZBnuqY1 pic.twitter.com/lVD7WxXAgl
— Melanio Escobar (@MelanioBar) July 18, 2025
What's more, they were treated better than they should have been, given the kinds of crimes their gang committed in the U.S. -- murders, apartment takeovers, shots fired at police:
Two things to note:
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 18, 2025
1. None of those prisoners look mistreated, underfed or tortured in any manner.
2. El Salvador sees its role as a global player continue to rise with this very high impact diplomacy. https://t.co/A8rjvZeMTi
Being criminals, they faked sick, the better to serve the political aims of the Maduro administration, whose prisons are often torture chambers. If the returning Venezuelan thugs could claim they too were tortured, and watch as gullible NGOs believed them and thus, then they would be off the hook, as "everyone does it."
Funny how the perfectly healthy Tren de Aragua detainees suddenly fall ill the moment they set foot in Venezuela.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 19, 2025
Same script, every time. pic.twitter.com/P6U1EeLLyF
More to the point, the deal really went through and Maduro emptied his prisons of his prized American hostages as well as a reported large number of Venezuelan political prisoners, who were put there to keep them from challenging the Venezuelan regime.
What kind of a dictator does that? Normally, dictators love to empty their prisons of their criminals and riff-raff, the better to take them off their hands and make gringo pay the price of their plague-on-humanity crimes. Even Maduro's patron and role model, the Castro Cuban regime did that in 1980 with the Mariel boatlift, refusing to take the contents of those emptied prisons back.
Why did Maduro want his prisoners and criminals back so badly that he would give up his precious American hostages and Venezuelan political prisoners? That's right, because they were valuable to him -- as drug dealers who pay the regime kickbacks, as enforcers who shoot into crowds protesting the regime and acting as death squads on behalf of the government, and other nefarious purposes. It strongly suggests that Maduro dispatched them to the states as agents to wreak mayhem on the hated gringos, and when that didn't work, he wanted his operatives back.
No dictator wants to take back criminals unless they are of some use to him. These guys apparently were.
And that tells us President Trump was right all along to invoke the Alien Enemies Act in getting them out of the country as soon as possible. The media, including ABC News, cited above, and various judicial satrapies have tried to declare the invocation of the act as baseless and legally invalid, but it's obvious these people were agents -- valuable agents, valuable enough to Maduro to make him want to give up his most prized prisoners.
He wouldn't release these people otherwise.
Trump was right all along to try to keep these people out of our country as an invading foreign force.
You’re free now… pic.twitter.com/bbI6nfcyIS
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 19, 2025
Image: Screen shot from President of El Salvador video, posted on X