Bulwark Takes - BOMBSHELL: Trump Admin’s Secret Flight Logs Revealed. Prisoner Exchanges With Venezuela?

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Hacked flight logs reveal dozens more migrants secretly deported by the U.S. to El Salvador’s gulag—just as a shocking prisoner swap deal emerges. Tim Miller takes on the latest bombshell developments.

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That's code indulge20 at liquidiv.com. Hey, everybody. Tim O from The Bulwark here. We have two breaking news stories regarding the Venezuelans that our government kidnapped and disappeared to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Both are bombshells. The first came from 404 Media, which has been doing some really excellent investigative reporting on Trump 2.0.

I would definitely recommend checking them out. They received hacked flight logs that targeted the Global X, the plane company that was flying these kidnappees to El Salvador and a hacker targeted Global X and got the manifest of the flights. The result was that there were dozens of people that were on the flight manifests that had not been publicly acknowledged before by the government. So there were potentially more Venezuelans than had been publicly known or people from other nationalities sent to the El Salvador gulag. There's some evidence, public evidence that we'll get into that at

least some of the people on those manifests were actually sent to El Salvador. So we'll get to that in a second. But simultaneously, like literally stories coming out, like within the hour here, Reuters is reporting that El Salvador has agreed to a prisoner swap with Venezuela. And that the number in the Reuters story is the 238 Venezuelans will be sent to El Salvador in exchange for, interestingly, American prisoners, not El Salvadoran prisoners. So we'll get to that in a second. So a lot to unpack here. Hopefully, silver lining, good news that some of these men are alive and that they'll get out of El Salvador and be able to go home to Venezuela. A ton of caveats with that. Number one, these men were fleeing Venezuela. You think about the context of Andre, he was gay, had been at a protest, was worried that he'd be targeted by the government

while he was leaving Venezuela. You know, how will the Venezuelan government, the authoritarian Venezuelan government treat these men upon return, you know, that all kind of remains to be seen, right? Hopefully, they'll get due process be treated well, if that turns out and they make it home, that does not in any way offset the abomination of how this country treated them. People fleeing communism, asylees hadn't broken the laws in many cases, hadn't even broken immigration laws in some cases, and that we kidnapped them, disappeared them to a concentration camp and then now they're sent back to the home country that they're fleeing. So I mean, much more to come on all of that. I'll be talking to the lawyers representing these men.

We'll see what's happening, assuming this swap goes through. On the 404 story, just again, to underscore how outrageous this all is, there had been a public list of people that CBS had reported first, then the DHS had acknowledged of about 200 some odd Venezuelans that had been sent to El Salvador. The hacked flight manifesto indicates that there were more. So our government like in secret disappeared people,

like to black sites essentially, didn't publicly acknowledge it, didn't give them due process, didn't allow them to talk to a lawyer, didn't allow them to talk to their families. People didn't know where they were, just completely disappeared off the map by our government. And we know, as I mentioned, that some of them were sent to Sacoat, because I want to give you this example here. It's the case of Keiter Alexander Flores Navas. He's from Venezuela. His family had been protesting his disappearance and demanding answers. In a TikTok video posted in March against from 404 Media, his mother Ana Navas explains that they suddenly stopped hearing from him before the March 15th flights.

They didn't know. He hadn't been publicly acknowledged. They didn't know what happened. And she didn't know where he was until she saw a photo of him in Sukkot amongst the group of other prisoners. The only reason this mother knew where her son was, was because of the fucking snuff videos and snuff photos that the DHS and Bukele in El Salvador were putting out. Other examples, there's another TikTok video, the mother of a 21-year-old,

Brandon Sagaran Cruz, explained that he'd been disappeared for three months with no news of his whereabouts. His existence on this flight manifest was the first kind of acknowledgement that on this flight manifest was the first kind of acknowledgement that that is what happened to him, that he was presumably sent to El Salvador. So there are others here that hadn't been previously known about. Like imagine being their family. You don't know somebody just whoosh, disappears off the face of the earth. You see these horrible pictures from El Salvador. You hear the testimony of Briego Garcia about how he was beaten and abused and this horrific treatment. You hear the reports from that one-time reporter, Philip Hulsinger, about the screams and the yelps of the people that were going there. It is

truly just appalling that our government was participating in this. And as serious as the Jeff Epstein story is, and as sympathy I have for the victims, that is unboundless. And, you know, I understand that, look, I've gotten some laughs, the comedy element about how horrible Trump has handled this. Like the fact that currently right now, this is ongoing. Like we have this potentially prisoner swap happening between unknown people that we disappeared to a foreign government. We kidnapped, we don't know, we're waiting to hear whether they're alive

or dead. That is like, this is an ongoing humanitarian crisis. It is our government This is an ongoing humanitarian crisis. It is our government breaking international law. It is a depraved treatment of people, dehumanizing treatment of people. It has been marked with lies from our government, repeated, as well as just noxious as well as just noxious rhetoric about the people that they kidnapped. Many of them had just been trying to flee oppression to try to come for a better life as so many have come to this country before. So in a perfect world, well, in a perfect world, none of this would have happened. But in a perfect world, the ones that want to come to America could come. But obviously, that's not going to happen under this government. And so we have to hope that this prisoner swap is real, that the Venezuelan regime treats these people with more humanity and decency than our government did.

We'll see if that plays out. We'll keep you guys posted as stories develop. Once again, shout out to 404 media on uncovering that our government had sent more people than we even knew to this foreign black site. Subscribe to the feed. Any developments on this story in particular, but on other stuff in the news, we'll get it to you here at The Bulwark. Appreciate you guys tuning in. Tell your friends and we'll see you soon.