CARACAS, Venezuela — Six Americans who had been detained in Venezuela in recent months were freed by the government of President Nicolás Maduro after he met Friday with a senior Trump administration official.
President Donald Trump and his envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, announced the release of the six men on social media. Mr. Grenell posted on X a photo showing him and the men aboard an aircraft.
Mr. Grenell’s hourslong trip to Venezuela, according to the White House, was focused on Trump’s efforts to deport Venezuelans back to their home country, which currently does not accept them, and on the release of the detained Americans.
“We are wheels up and headed home with these 6 American citizens,” Mr. Grenell wrote on X. “They just spoke to @realDonaldTrump and they couldn’t stop thanking him.”
The visit by Mr. Grenell came as a shock to many Venezuelans who hoped that Trump would continue the “maximum pressure” campaign he pursued against the authoritarian Venezuelan leader during his first term.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s special envoy to Latin America, previewed Mr. Grenell’s visit to Caracas in a conference call with journalists on Friday. He said Mr. Grenell, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump's first term, was in Venezuela on a “very specific mission” that in no way detracts from the Trump administration’s goal of restoring democracy in the South American nation.
“I would urge the Maduro government, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, to heed special envoy Ric Grenell’s message,” said Mr. Claver-Carone, himself a former top national security aide to Trump during his first administration. “Ultimately there will be consequences otherwise.”
The visit comes less than a month after Mr. Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term despite credible evidence that he lost last year’s election by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The U.S. government, along with several other Western nations, does not recognize Mr. Maduro’s claim to victory and instead point to tally sheets collected by the opposition coalition showing that its candidate, Edmundo González, won by a more than a two-to-one margin.
Venezuelan state television aired footage of Mr. Grenell and Mr. Maduro speaking in the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, the capital, and said the meeting had been requested by the U.S. government.
Signing an executive order in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump was asked if Mr. Grenell being filmed meeting with Mr. Maduro lent legitimacy to an administration that the Trump White House hasn’t official recognized.
“No. We want to do something with Venezuela. I’ve been a very big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro,” Trump responded. “They’ve treated us not so good, but they’ve treated, more importantly, the Venezuelan people, very badly."
Trump added that Mr. Grenell is “meeting with a lot of different people, but we’re for the people of Venezuela.”
Some Republicans criticized the visit.
“This is terrible timing,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela and Iran during the first Trump administration. “A meeting with Maduro will be used by him to legitimize his rule and show that the Americans recognize him as president. If the purpose is to deliver a tough message about migration issues, the president could’ve done that himself. There was no need to send someone to Caracas.”
The dispute over the election results sparked nationwide protests. More than 2,200 people were arrested during and after the demonstrations.
Among those detained are as many as 10 Americans who the government has linked to alleged plots to destabilize the country. One is a Navy SEAL. Neither the White House nor Mr. Maduro’s government immediately released the names of the six who were freed Friday.
The Trump administration has taken a slew of actions to make good on promises to crack down on illegal immigration and carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.
Those measures include the revocation earlier this week of a Biden administration decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation, putting some at risk of being removed from the country in about two months.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Friday that Trump had instructed Mr. Grenell to “identify a place and ensure that repatriation flights” carrying Venezuelans, including members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, "land in Venezuela.” She said Trump also ordered Mr. Grenell to “ensure that all U.S. detainees in Venezuela are returned home.”
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2013, when its economy unraveled and Mr. Maduro first took office. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the pandemic, migrants increasingly set their sights on the U.S.
Venezuelans’ desire for better living conditions and their rejection of Mr. Maduro and his policies are expected to keep pushing people to emigrate.
Ahead of the presidential election last year, a nationwide poll by Venezuela-based research firm Delphos showed about a quarter of the population thinking about emigrating if Mr. Maduro was re-elected.
Mr. Grenell has reached out to Mr. Maduro before on Trump’s behalf to secure the release of imprisoned Americans only to come home empty handed.
In 2020, he traveled with Erik Prince, the founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, to Mexico City for a secret meeting with a top Maduro aide. The backchannel talks centered on Mr. Maduro’s offer to swap eight Americans then imprisoned in Venezuela for businessman Alex Saab, a close ally of the president charged in the U.S. with money laundering, the Associated Press previously reported.
No deal was struck and Mr. Grenell’s demand that Mr. Maduro step down was dismissed by the Venezuelan president’s envoy. Mr. Grenell has always denied he was negotiating a hostage swap.
Later, in December 2023, the Biden administration exchanged Saab for 10 Americans as part of a policy to re-engage Mr. Maduro ahead of presidential elections.
First Published: January 31, 2025, 7:19 p.m.
Updated: February 1, 2025, 3:23 a.m.
