A plane carrying Venezuelan migrants repatriated from the U.S. lands in Venezuela on Friday.

El Salvador’s government sent more than 250 Venezuelans it was holding in a maximum-security prison to Caracas in exchange for 10 Americans detained by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, U.S. and Salvadoran officials said.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said Friday’s exchange was the result of months of negotiations involving U.S., Salvadoran, and Venezuelan officials. Bukele didn’t say how many prisoners from each county were exchanged. In a video he posted on X, tattooed Venezuelans in handcuffs walked between rows of security forces clad in riot gear to board a plane.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Venezuelan political prisoners would also be released.

Most of the Americans released from Caracas had been designated “wrongfully detained” by the State Department after being picked up by Venezuelan security forces after crossing the border from Colombia or traveling in the country.

The Trump administration invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to deport the Venezuelans to El Salvador in March, despite a judge’s order that the planes carrying them should turn around. Administration officials accused them of affiliation with gangs despite what U.S. courts determined was scant evidence. The Venezuelans were imprisoned in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot, a sprawling facility that Bukele wants to expand.

The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was sent to the facility because of a clerical error, spurred Democratic lawmakers to advocate for his release and launch a congressional investigation. The Trump administration, which maintained that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, returned him to the U.S. last month to face human-smuggling charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Many of the Venezuelans who were deported to El Salvador had open asylum cases in the U.S., and said they risked persecution if they returned home. Many worked as barbers, construction workers, and delivery drivers and didn’t have criminal histories, according to court filings.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro speaks to the media in May.

Human rights advocates criticized the swap. “The administration sent these individuals to languish for months incommunicado in one of the most notorious prisons in the world without any due process and now appears with this latest maneuver to be trying to avoid all judicial accountability,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who led the group’s Cecot litigation.

Bukele suggested a prisoner swap in April. In a message to Maduro posted on social media, he proposed “a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number…of the thousands of political prisoners you hold.”

Venezuela’s government said the proposal was cynical. Venezuelan officials had maintained that the treatment of its nationals in the U.S. and El Salvador constituted a “serious violation of international human rights law.” The Maduro government had slammed the Trump administration for arresting and deporting Venezuelan nationals while dubbing the Cecot prison “a concentration camp.”

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello hailed the return of Venezuelans in a news conference at the airport but didn’t comment on the prisoner swap with the U.S.

“This is good news for Venezuela,” Cabello said, as he stood in front of a U.S. plane on the tarmac. “These people had been kidnapped and persecuted in U.S. territory.”

Venezuela’s Information Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Regime loyalists rallied in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas on Friday, urging the U.S. to return Venezuelan minors separated from their families during the U.S.’s deportation push.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello speaks on Friday while holding a repatriated child.

The prisoner exchange comes amid shaky ongoing negotiations between the Maduro regime and the U.S. Since the Trump administration took office, Caracas has sought relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for receiving Venezuelan deportees.

Venezuela previously released six Americans to Trump envoy Ric Grenell during a visit to Caracas in January. Four months later it released imprisoned U.S. Air Force veteran Joseph St. Clair.

But in March, Washington reimposed punitive measures against Venezuela’s oil industry by revoking Chevron’s license to operate in the South American country, citing the Maduro regime’s failure to accept deportation flights fast enough.

Venezuela has continued to take in as many as two deportation flights a week. More than 30 flights have carried more than 4,000 Venezuelans back to their home country from the U.S. since deportations resumed in February. Some eight million Venezuelans have fled that country in the past decade because of hyperinflation and repression under Maduro’s authoritarian rule.

Since Jan. 20, the Trump administration has secured the release of 72 U.S. citizens detained abroad, including the group released on Friday, according to U.S. officials.