The White House announced on Friday that ten Americans have been freed from Venezuelan prisons, and the photograph of the newly freed men says it all.
In a picture posted on X by the Official account of the U.S. External Office for Venezuela, the ten hold up small American flags while posing next to a larger one, with many of them grinning from ear to ear.
“Nothing says freedom like the American flag. Ten Americans freed from Venezuelan prisons today are coming home because of @POTUS, @SecRubio & @nayibbukele,” the post read.”America First in action.”
Nothing says freedom like the American flag. Ten Americans freed from Venezuelan prisons today are coming home because of @POTUS, @SecRubio & @nayibbukele.
America First in action. pic.twitter.com/pc6bI0Wgnx
— Embajada de los EE.UU., Venezuela (@usembassyve) July 18, 2025
The post credited President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with the freedom of the men. It comes in exchange for getting hundreds of illegal Venezuelan immigrants who were rounded up and sent to El Salvador earlier this year back home, the New York Post reported.
El Salvador will send back some 300 Venezuelan migrants after the Trump administration agreed to pay $6 million to house them in a notorious Salvadoran prison. The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime law to quickly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang.
Rubio shared the news as well, writing on X, “Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom.”
Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way to freedom.
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…
— 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 release of Venezuelan political prisoners,” he added.
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The El Salvador president shared videos on X of the illegal immigrants who had been deported from the U.S. boarding planes.
His post read:
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.
As was offered to the Venezuelan regime back in April, we carried out this exchange in return for a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners, people that regime had kept in its prisons for years, as well as all the American citizens it was holding as hostages.
These individuals are now en route to El Salvador, where they will make a brief stop before continuing their journey home.
This operation is the result of months of negotiations with a tyrannical regime that had long refused to release one of its most valuable bargaining chips: its hostages.
However, thanks to the tireless efforts of many officials from both the United States and El Salvador, and above all, thanks to Almighty God, it was achieved.
In this, as in other matters, I remind you: patience and trust.
The Post report said that in 2024, nearly a dozen Americans were detained in Venezuela who were linked “to alleged plots to destabilize the country. They were among the dozens of people, including activists, opposition members, and union leaders, that Venezuela’s government took into custody in its brutal campaign to crack down on dissent in the 11 months since [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro claimed to win reelection.”
It went on:
The US government, along with several other Western nations, does not recognize Maduro’s claim to victory and instead points to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, won the July 2024 election by a more than a two-to-one margin.
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