Trump Officials Used Prisoners in El Salvador as Bargaining Chips Despite Repeatedly Claiming They Were Beyond U.S. Control: Report

Despite repeated claims to federal courts that the United States has no authority over Venezuelan migrants deported from U.S. soil and currently detained in El Salvador, Trump administration officials were actively negotiating a prisoner swap involving those same detainees, a report by The New York Times has revealed.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions of United States Richard Grenell led parallel efforts to arrange a deal with Venezuela's authoritarian government, according to four people familiar with the talks. One proposal would have seen the exchange of roughly 250 Venezuelan migrants detained in El Salvador, deported there at U.S. request, for the release of 11 U.S. citizens and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners held in Venezuela. The other offered to extend Chevron's license to operate in Venezuela.

According to the outlet, both teams negotiated with the same Venezuelan official, president of Venezuela's National Assembly Jorge Rodríguez, but the lack of coordination created confusion about who actually represented the U.S. administration. Ultimately, neither plan materialized.

"The approximately 250 people expelled from the United States are still being held in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador," explains the report. "And it became clear that while Mr. Trump's White House once said that it had no control over the detainees in El Salvador, it was willing to use them as bargaining chips."

The report comes on the heels of court filings revealed on Tuesday in which Salvadoran officials have said for the first time that more than 130 Venezuelan migrants who have been detained for months in a megaprison in El Salvador are in control of the U.S.

A document submitted to a U.S. district court includes the Salvadoran government's statement to the United Nations, saying the migrants "remain under the responsibility of the United States." The filing was made by the ACLU and Democracy Forward Foundation on behalf of families of migrants allegedly disappeared and secretly transferred from U.S. custody to El Salvador's high-security CECOT prison in March.

"El Salvador said out loud what everyone knew: The United States is in charge of the Venezuelans shipped off in the middle of the night back in March," said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt to The Washington Post on Tuesday.