Bulwark Takes - Freed from Hell, but Still Not Safe

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Tim Miller talks with Mother Jones reporters Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias about their investigation into how innocent Venezuelan migrants were secretly deported by the U.S., detained in El Salvador, and used in a political prisoner swap. You can read their full story at Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/we-were-kidnapped-prisoner-swap-venezuela-bukele-cecot-trump-ms13-deportation-el-salvador/

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everybody, Tim Miller from The Bullwork here. I'm here with two reporters from Mother Jones, Noah Leonard and Isabel Diaz, who have been talking to the families of the Venezuelans that had been disappeared to El Salvador and have now been part of a hostage exchange, I think we should call it,

and have been arrived home back in Venezuela. They had an article out on Friday, we were kidnapped, that includes some conversations with some of the family members. So hey, how you guys doing? Thanks for coming on. All right, yeah, thanks for having us on, Tim.

You mentioned in particular the family of Neri Alvarado. People have been kind of following this along with us here on this channel. Remember, he's the guy with the autism awareness tattoo. Maybe talk about that conversation and we'll use that as a kickoff. How are the families reacting to all this and what have we learned about their treatment in El Salvador? Yeah. So I was first in touch with them on Friday with Neri's older sister Maria Daniello and then his boss from the United States Enrique Hernandez, who became quite close to him and has really done a lot of work on his behalf from the U.S.

He's a U.S. citizen in Dallas, a Venezuelan immigrant. But what I heard was, you know, they had gotten a notification that he was going to be arriving at the airport imminently. They live about four hours away in a very small town in Venezuela. So they're basically about to get on the road to drive to Caracas to meet Neri there. What I heard this morning was that they still have not met him yet because the Venezuelans are going through various processes. But they did get a call from him this morning, they said. And just, you know, of course, he expressed great relief to be back in Venezuela.

But, you know, as Enrique said, you know, when I talked to him on Friday, it's like, you know, yes, he's happy, but there's that bitterness there. There's this reality of the injustice of what happened, of course, as well. I know you guys have been monitoring, the article included some conversations or some interviews. I guess some of the Venezuelans have been out, and I saw one video of a guy who was hugging his family and others are still going through the process. What's your sense for what we know at this point? I think my impression was that I saw that video as well.

I think it was Francisco Cacique. It seemed like he was able to have a brief moment with his family at the airport, if I'm not mistaken. And it's a very moving reunion. I think his brother, who we had been in touch also during our reporting, his brother appears to say to him, you know, I promised you that we were gonna be with you. We were gonna go wherever it took to get you back.

You're not alone. And then you can see in that video as well, the other family members at the airport, were holding the photos of their loved ones. And, but yeah, I think most of the families that we have, you know, been texting since Friday, they still haven't had a chance to be with their relatives. I think if the New York Times reported that they are staying in a hotel and like Noah said, going through medical and kind of some triage process with the Venezuelan government. But yeah, I think just to echo what Noah was saying,

the families express really this overwhelming sense of relief. I think for many of them, perhaps it was unclear whether their loved ones were even alive for these four months. They've been kind of yelling, shouting into the void, like seeking justice for this man. And now I can only imagine that they are counting the minutes to be able to actually have them at home. Yeah. So you were talking, most of the folks you're talking to were in Venezuela and some here in America. I guess what is the feeling about, at least, I mean, in some of these cases, the men were fleeing Venezuela, because they're worried about political persecution

or persecution on, you know, sexuality or whatever. And then in some of the cases, maybe not, it was more of an economic, you know, kind of immigration. But like, what are their worries still? Yeah, it doesn does feel like on the one hand, it's like this enormous relief that you're out of this concentration camp in El Salvador where you can't talk to your family or lawyers, you know nothing. On the other hand, is there still concern

about re-entry to Venezuela or maybe not? I don't know, what have you heard? Yeah, I think it's gonna be a mix and it's also a complicated situation now where, you know, at the moment and probably what we've heard is that, you know, we'll see, but that people are expecting their loved ones to be released tomorrow. At least some of them are. But, you know, right now they're in Venezuelan government custody, essentially. And, you know, it is important to remember there's kind of no, there's no,

at the highest levels of power, there's no good guys in the story. We're talking about the Maduro regime, the Bukele regime and the Trump and Trump. So I think they're in a position now where even if they did have those fears, they couldn't be honest about them or express them, you know, wouldn't be advisable for a family member to be telling us, you know, about someone who is now obviously back in Venezuela about those fears. But yes, like you said, you know, it's a ring. We're talking about 200 about 250 people who came to the United States for a variety of reasons. But yeah, I know what you have here is what you know, one of the mothers that we talked to on Friday, she expressed that exact sentiment,

that duality of being very happy because it was her birthday on Friday. And she finally could say, you know, I got a gift from God to know that my son will be released. But at the same time, I am scared for what might happen to him because he specifically fled Venezuela, fleeing the colectivos, which are pro-government paramilitary groups that are aligned with the Maduro regime. So she was very much aware of the potential harm that her son could be subjected to back in Venezuela. And we know from reporting from ProPublica that I think dozens of these men have pending asylum cases. And I'm sure that in many instances, it might be related to experiences that they had, perhaps fleeing persecution in Venezuela. So, yeah.

Pete Slauson Yeah, one of the grossest comments I've seen since then from, I forget if it was from DOJ or DHS was that some of the men might be brought back, but not because they have credible asylum claims and we want to protect them, but because we want to prosecute some of them. So, you know, like that's, you know, so to that, it just shows to your point about the no good guys, right? It's like, it's hard to feel confident, right? And it's, again, it's good to be out of the one of the worst prisons in the world. It's hard to feel confident about the state of play with given the governments we're dealing with. Yeah, I think that just kind of highlights the whole farsen and really evilness of this. I mean, is it when you're down to even on Friday, the government, US government still saying, oh, we maintain that all 250 of these people are members of Trendy Aragua,

despite the fact that, you fact that basically every major news organization in the United States and as our reporting in China as well, it's completely untrue. There's no evidence at all for it. And they refuse to provide any evidence. For example, there's just one small thing where 100 days out they put out a press release of all the fake news that immigration reporters had put out

during this administration and how they had misrepresented cases. They were like, the Maryland father actually killed Marioro Briego-Garcia as an MS-13 member. But notably, Andre Romero-Arnandes and Neri Alvarado were not on that list. I emailed them saying, these are pretty big cases. You've totally left them out. Should I take that to mean that the reporting has been correct? No response. So they know that these people are innocent. They know that they have nothing on them, and yet they maintain this fiction. It's just pure lies. Mad Fientist What is your... And maybe the answer to this is we just don't know at this point because this came a little bit out of nowhere. And

there'd been a conversation about some sort of prisoner's slot with Venezuela that Grinnell and Rubio were involved in that had kind of fallen apart, some other type of trade like a month ago. Like, why did this happen now? Have the families you've talked to heard at all from the Venezuelan government about what this was, this pressure coming on Bukele from other Latin countries, do you think? Or, you know, I guess that's the one big question I have about the sort of geopolitics of this. I don't know, Do you have any sense for for what was the impetus? I think that's it's it's a great question I'm not sure that I that I have the answer and hopefully I think we will know more in the in the upcoming days

I know, you know from the families that we were in touch with on Friday Like they said, you know, this kind of seemed to have come out of nowhere like we didn't know that this was gonna happen and Yeah, there was a sense that it's like to happen. And yeah, there was a sense that it's like, we didn't see this, that this was coming. And I know that, you know, some of the families have expressed, they are thankful to the Maduro regime for, you know, what they believe that they were able to secure the release of their loved ones. But yeah, I think, you know, to me, this has just been, I really hope that we kind of don't forget that these men

were never supposed to have been sent to Sackad in the first place. And clearly, we know that they didn't have to have spent four months there. And I think this kind of sudden release proves that even more. Yeah. And it feels like a PR win for the Maduro regime. I kind of understand why they would want to do it, right? Because it's like this, oh, you know, we're fighting for the Venezuelans who are treated so horribly by the Americans. So this was another besides just the humanitarian nightmare and the

depravity of us doing what we're going to do. We also are just like, I mean, it's looking at from the Trump administration's perspective and Rubio's perspective, who wants to like paint Maduro as, you know, kind of an evil communist dictator or whatever. Well, he just like handed him a massive win that makes it seem like Maduro is the one on the side of human rights here against, you know, the Americans and Bukele. Yeah, no, I mean, it's quite hard to paint Maduro in a positive light and somehow the Trump administration has managed to deliver them a PR victory on this. Totally for no reason at all. And similar to the Bukele government, we've seen there's been reports of his approval rating, which has traditionally

been very high, going down a bit. And yes, the idea of holding 250 people from another Latin American country for a Latin American head of state is not is not a good move either, especially as it became abundantly clear that how innocent the large majority of these men were. And even he there were some reporting from the New York Times is kind of like it was back channeling to the Trump administration saying like, Hey, you said you were sending me the worst of the worst. And you basically sent me a bunch of random guys like this is BS. Like, that's not what I signed up for.

Of course, he didn't say that publicly, but sure. Um, all right. Well, the, uh, we mentioned Neri at the top. Um, are there any of the other, you know, cases you want to highlight or mention from the folks you'd talked to before I let you go? I think we were also, um, able to see a photo of, um, Arturo, um, Suarez, who was the singer. He, yes, he was the singer.

There was actually a video from Telesur, the Venezuelan broadcaster, that they were able to... It seems like they were on the plane as it landed. In that video, some of the men were able to say a little bit in just a few minutes, some of what they had experienced at Sikad and, you know, they describe things. They said, you know, we were kidnapped, kind of 24 hours a day, we had no contact, we didn't know whether it was day or night at any point. They said that they were beaten, you know, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which they're beaten. Yeah, that they were, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Beaten? Which they were beaten, yeah, that they were hit, which also kind of echoes

Quimara Briego-Garcia's testimony about having been tortured at Secod. So that appears to have been kind of the first time we were able to hear a little bit from them. And yeah, some of those horror stories are sure to come to light in the next few days. All right. Well, we'll keep monitoring. Thank you guys so much for your reporting on this. It's greatly appreciated.

Noah Lenard and Isabella Diaz of Mother Jones. You guys have been on this for the start. We really appreciate that. And as we get, if you do hear more stories from the families in the coming days, we'd love to follow up. Thank you, Tim. Thanks, Tim. All right.

We'll see you.