State Department Scrambled To Deal With Triple Murderer Repatriated From Venezuela: 'We Did Get The S.O.B. Released'

State Department officials reportedly scrambled to deal with the fact that one of the U.S. citizens being repatriated as part of a deal with Venezuela and El Salvador is a triple murderer.

The New York Times detailed that officials debated whether to include Dahud Hanid Ortiz in a statement detailing the exchange, and even wondered if they could send him to Spain, where he committed the crimes.

An email exchange reported by the outlet noted that a press official said "we had understood that we don't want to refer to him as a hostage or wrongfully detained, which is why we said nine."

Michael Kozak, who oversees diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere, said the country "should not have asked for him." "Can we now extradite him to Spain? We did get the S.O.B. released," he added.

Ortiz ended up being included in the release, with Kozak saying that the fact that he is a "bum does not change" that the administration got 10 people like it negotiated. However, officials did then refer to nine people instead of 10 afterwards.

"We do not comment on allegedly 'leaked' emails. We are very pleased that nine innocent, wrongfully detained Americans have been freed from Venezuela. The Trump administration is committed to law and order; violators will be held accountable for their crimes," an official from the State Department told the NYT.

Ortiz is living freely in the U.S. at the moment, two people with knowledge of the matter told the outlet. His crimes were all documented in the media and public court records for years, and in 2023 officials in the Joe Biden administration decided not to take him in a different prisoner swap.

Spanish outlet El Pais noted that Ortiz was born in Venezuela and served in Iraq after getting U.S. citizenship. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Venezuela in January last year for killing three people in Madrid in 2016. He had escaped to the South American country after the crime and arrested there two years later.

The prisoner exchange took place in July and involved the return of 252 Venezuelans held in El Salvador's maximum security prison CECOT in exchange for the 10 Americans held in Venezuela.

Diosdado Cabello, Justice Minister in Venezuela's authoritarian government, said when discussing the exchange that "we handed over some murderers for you."