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El Salvador offers to swap Venezuelan US deportees for political prisoners

Published

1 year ago

April 20, 2025

El Salvador offers to swap Venezuelan US deportees for political prisoners

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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported to his country by the US in exchange for “political prisoners” held by Caracas.

Bukele, the authoritarian leader of El Salvador, has agreed to hold deportees from the US in a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT in exchange for a fee. The Trump administration has claimed the Venezuelan migrants belong to criminal gangs including Tren de Aragua, which Washington designates a “terrorist organisation”.

But some of the migrants have not been convicted or charged with a crime, and they were deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order blocking the move.

The Trump administration admitted in court this month that one of the migrants was deported wrongly due to an “administrative error”, and some of the men signed paperwork agreeing to be returned to their home country, family members told the Financial Times.

Bukele wrote on social media platform X on Sunday that the men could be sent to Venezuela in exchange for the same number of “political prisoners” being held by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro under a “humanitarian agreement”.

“Your political prisoners haven’t committed any crime,” he wrote.

The El Salvadoran president did not specify the fate of the prisoners to be accepted from Venezuela.

A spokesperson for the Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bukele has a close relationship with US President Donald Trump’s administration, whose officials have praised his iron-fisted approach to crime.

But the deportations — which both Washington and Bukele have publicised on social media, posting images and videos of men with shaven heads, doubled over in chains — have drawn public condemnation from rights groups and Democratic politicians.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland, travelled this week El Salvador and met Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration admitted it had wrongly deported.

The US Supreme Court last week ruled that the White House should “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but Bukele has refused assist in his repatriation.

If Maduro were to accept the deal, it could ease political pressure on the Trump administration, which has been accused of denying due process to immigration detainees. The Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily blocked the White House from further deportations under a rarely used 18th century law.

Maduro, who assumed Venezuela’s presidency in 2013 following the death of socialist revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, has cracked down on dissent following a disputed election in July. According to Venezuelan rights group Foro Penal, there are 903 political prisoners being held in the country, including protester and opposition leaders.

Among the political prisoners Bukele mentioned was the son-in-law of Edmundo González, a former diplomat who ran against Maduro and is regarded by Washington and many of its allies as the winner of last year’s election. He also referred to a journalist, Roland Carreño, and the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose home has been repeatedly surrounded by government agents.

Maduro has also presided over an economic collapse that has led 7.7mn Venezuelans — nearly a quarter of the population — to flee the country.

After initially pursuing talks with Maduro, Trump has intensified a “maximum pressure” campaign from his first term in office, imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s vital oil industry and cancelling Biden-era exemptions granted to international energy groups including Chevron, Repsol, and Eni.

Last month, Washington announced 25 per cent “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy Venezuelan crude, in an effort to cut off funds to Maduro’s regime.

News

California Candidates to Appear in First Major Debate After Swalwell

Published

2 hours ago

April 22, 2026

Press Room

California Candidates to Appear in First Major Debate After Swalwell

Candidates in California’s volatile race for governor will meet Wednesday night for the first televised debate since Eric Swalwell dropped out, each looking to seize momentum in the tight contest.

The debate, being held at the television studio of KRON4 in San Francisco, will include four Democrats and two Republicans who are tightly bunched in recent polls, with many voters still undecided less than six weeks before the June 2 primary.

Mr. Swalwell, a Democrat, had just begun to emerge as a Democratic front-runner when his campaign swiftly collapsed after he was accused of sexual assault in news reports on April 10.

Candidates have taken relatively few risks so far in debates around the state, but every candidate is now eyeing a chance to jump to the front of the pack.

“Even though we have seen some movement in the last couple of weeks, it continues to be a fairly crowded, fractured field,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. “So candidates need to be able to grab attention in a debate like this.”

The debate comes as Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former California attorney general, has enjoyed a surge of support in polls since Mr. Swalwell dropped out of the race.

Mr. Becerra and Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, did not originally meet the threshold to participate in Wednesday’s debate when Mr. Swalwell was running. But they both qualified after receiving enough support in a follow-up poll that debate organizers commissioned once Mr. Swalwell had dropped out.

The other Democrats scheduled to participate are Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, and Katie Porter, a former congresswoman, each of whom have been polling near the top of the Democratic field for several weeks. The Republicans in the debate are Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by President Trump, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County.

All candidates run on the same ballot in California’s nonpartisan primary, with the two who receive the most votes advancing to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. The large number of Democratic candidates has created fear among state party leaders that their voters could splinter, potentially allowing two Republicans to sweep the primary in this heavily Democratic state.

The odds of that happening have decreased since Mr. Swalwell dropped out and another Democrat, Betty Yee, withdrew on Monday. But Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, still believes there are too many Democrats in the race and has urged those lagging in polls to end their campaigns. (The actual ballot will include 61 candidates for governor, most of whom are completely unknown to voters.)

The messy race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits, has played out as the most unpredictable contest California has seen in a generation. It has attracted a sprawling field but no one with the star power of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or the political might of Mr. Newsom or former Gov. Jerry Brown.

Much of California’s Democratic establishment is still figuring out whom to back in the turbulent race.

Mr. Newsom has not endorsed anyone, saying he trusts voters to elect someone “who reflects the values and direction Californians believe in.” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker from San Francisco, and Senator Alex Padilla also have not announced their favorites. Senator Adam Schiff endorsed Mr. Swalwell earlier this year but quickly withdrew his support after the accusations against him were published.

On Tuesday, Ms. Yee endorsed Mr. Steyer, praising his work to fight climate change and engage young voters. Mr. Steyer has swamped his competitors with a raft of advertising by pouring $134 million from his personal fortune into his campaign.

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Becerra, whose campaign had appeared to be flailing until Mr. Swalwell dropped out, received the endorsement of Robert Rivas, the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly. Mr. Rivas said he had encouraged Mr. Becerra to run for governor because he was impressed by his work as California’s attorney general during President Trump’s first term.

“He understands both the policy and the politics,” Mr. Rivas said in an interview. “And he has a track record, in my opinion, of delivering results under pressure.”

The 90-minute debate on Wednesday begins at 7 p.m. PT and will be broadcast and streamed by KRON and other California stations.

News

Here’s What the New Virginia House Map Looks Like

Published

14 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

Here’s What the New Virginia House Map Looks Like

Virginians approved a new congressional map on Tuesday that would aggressively gerrymander the state in the Democrats’ favor, giving the party as many as four more U.S. House seats.

The new map draws eight safely Democratic districts and two competitive districts that lean Democratic, according to a New York Times analysis of 2024 presidential results. It leaves just one safe Republican seat, compared with the five seats the G.O.P. holds on the current map.

The proposed map was drawn by Democratic state legislators and approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. It eliminates three Republican-held seats in part by slicing the densely populated suburbs in Arlington and Fairfax Counties and reallocating their overwhelmingly Democratic voters into five congressional districts, some stretching more than a hundred miles into Republican areas.

Perhaps the most extreme new district is the Seventh, which begins at the Potomac River and stretches to the west and south in a manner that resembles a pair of lobster claws. Several well-known Virginia Democrats have already announced their candidacies and begun campaigning in the district.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.

News

Southern Poverty Law Center indicted on federal fraud charges

Published

17 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

Southern Poverty Law Center indicted on federal fraud charges

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel listens during a news conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday in Washington.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

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Jacquelyn Martin/AP

WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with payments of at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to people affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist groups.

“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.

The civil rights group faces charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought by the Justice Department in Alabama, where the organization is based.

The indictment came shortly after SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its program to pay informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 7.

SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

Blanche said the money was passed from the center through two different bank accounts before being loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups, which also included the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The group never disclosed to donors details of the informant program, he said.

“They’re required to under the laws associated with a nonprofit to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing,” he said.

The indictment includes details on at least nine unnamed informants were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s. Within the SPLC, they were known as field sources or “the Fs,” according to the indictment. One informant was paid more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the indictment said. Another was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.

The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

The center has been targeted by Republicans

The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

Moms for Liberty among conservative groups named 'extremist' by civil rights watchdog

The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.

The SPLC has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.

House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”