Over 260 people were released from prisons in El Salvador and Venezuela. Now they face the challenge of coming home.
A kite surfer on a South American adventure. A Navy SEAL whose family said he had traveled south for romance. A gay makeup artist who fled north for a better life. A man who sold bicycle parts for meager wages in Venezuela, before leaving for the United States.
All of these men were part of a large-scale prisoner swap conducted Friday between the United States and Venezuela’s governments.
The deal exchanged 10 Americans and U.S. permanent residents seized by the Venezuelan government for 252 Venezuelan immigrants the United States had deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
The men came from very different backgrounds. The American kite surfer, Lucas Hunter, 37, worked in finance in London and had gone on vacation in Colombia, where his family says he was nabbed by the Venezuelan authorities near the Colombia-Venezuela border. The Navy SEAL, Wilbert Castañeda, 37, spent his adult life in the U.S. military and had gone to Venezuela to see a romantic partner, according to his brother.
The Venezuelans, according to many of their families, had traveled to the United States for far different reasons. Many had trekked from South America through a dangerous jungle called the Darién Gap, seeking to escape an economic crisis and a repressive government.
The makeup artist, Andry Hernández Romero, fled persecution for his political opinions and sexual orientation, according to his lawyers. The seller of bicycle parts, Alirio Belloso, 30, left because he could not afford school supplies for his 8-year-old daughter or medicine for his diabetic mother, according to his wife.
