Following a meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas to discuss, in part, the release of Americans being held in the country, Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions announced on X Friday night that he was returning to the U.S. with six of them.
‘They just spoke to @realDonaldTrump and they couldn’t stop thanking him,’ Grenell said in his post without identifying the six men, four of whom were dressed in light-blue Venezuelan prison outfits.
It’s been reported that at least nine Americans have been held by Venezuela where Maduro’s officials have accused most of them of being involved in terrorism or acting as ‘mercenaries.’
On a call earlier on Friday with reporters, Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. special envoy on Latin America, said that ‘American hostages need to be released immediately, unequivocally.’
But he added that ‘this is not a quid pro quo. It’s not a negotiation in exchange for anything. Trump himself has made that very clear.’
The Venezuelan government said in a statement that the meeting between Maduro and Grenell at the presidential palace ‘took place with mutual respect and diverse issues of interest to both countries were discussed,’ including about migration, sanctions and detained Americans, as Reuters reported.
Less than a month ago, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term as Venezuela’s president. However, the U.S. government does not recognize him as the country’s legitimate head of state and instead believes that Edmundo González, the opposition coalition candidate, won the recent election by more than a two-to-one margin.
At the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said that he is ‘a very big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro.’
‘They’ve treated us not so good. But they’ve treated, more importantly, the Venezuelan people very badly.’
Grenell’s hours-long Friday visit to Venezuela was also intended to compel Maduro to accept the return of some 400 members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, which the country’s attorney general, Tarek Saab, has said was dismantled in 2023.
The deportations need to occur ‘without conditions’ and was ‘non-negotiable,’ said Claver-Carone.