Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special missions envoy, tweeted that he was returning from his trip to Caracas with the six Americans.

Samantha Schmidt, John Hudson and Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON
EnergiesNet.com 02 01 2025

Venezuela released six detained Americans Friday after Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special missions envoy, traveled to Caracas to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Grenell’s trip was believed to be the first direct meeting between a U.S. official and the autocrat since 2022.

Venezuela’s state-owned broadcaster showed Grenell shaking hands with a smiling Maduro in the Miraflores presidential palace, a striking image to capture the Trump administration’s first visit to Latin America. Later Friday, Grenell tweeted that he was returning to the United States with the six Americans.

The names of the people freed Friday were not publicized.

Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence, and Maduro, the authoritarian socialist who has ruled Venezuela since 2013, met to discuss the Americans detained in the South American country, as well as deportation flights, cooperation to confront the Tren de Aragua gang and energy, according to one person familiar with the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

Maduro’s government had detained at least nine Americans as part of a sweeping crackdown on dissidents and foreign nationals following the country’s widely discredited July presidential election. He accused some of the Americans — without providing evidence — of attempting to carry out violence in the country. U.S. officials and the family members of some of the detained Americans struggled for months to learn any information about their whereabouts.

One of the detained Americans was David Estrella, a 64-year-old from the Bronx who worked for pharmaceutical companies as a quality control operator. Estrella crossed the border into Venezuela on Sept. 9 to visit friends, a family spokesman said. Venezuelan authorities accused Estrella and other detained Americans of a plot to kill Maduro. For months, his family had no contact with him and received no information about where he might be held.

On Friday, Estralla’s family confirmed that he was among the Americans returning home with Grenell.

“After such horrible moments that we and David have suffered unjustly, we look forward to welcoming him home,” his former wife, Elvia Margarita Macias, said in a statement.

Maduro took office for a third term as president in July following an election that he appeared to lose. Exit polls and a Washington Post analysis of ballot receipts collected by the opposition indicated that challenger Edmundo González received twice as many votes.

The Biden and Trump administrations have both recognized González as the country’s president-elect. The former diplomat, who fled Venezuela last year under threat of arrest, was in Washington this month to attend Trump’s inauguration.

“It’s impossible to overstate the significance of Trump choosing Venezuela as the first country in the region to receive his administration,” Ramsey said. “I can’t recall the last time a U.S. official met with Maduro in the presidential palace with the cameras rolling. … This is uncharted territory.”

Maduro, in broadcast remarks on Friday night, said the meeting with Grenell was “positive” and that the two parties had “reached some initial agreements.” He did not provide further details about the agreements.

“We say to President Trump: We have taken a first step,” Maduro said. “Hopefully it can be sustained.”

Trump campaigned on plans for a “massive deportation” of migrants, but he cannot repatriate Venezuelan nationals without cooperation from Maduro.

Maduro has signaled a willingness to accept deportation flights in exchange for the preservation of oil licenses and increases in crude exports, The Washington Post has reported. Venezuela boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but its industry has been hobbled by U.S.-led sanctions and mismanagement.

It is not the first time Grenell has met with the Maduro government. In 2020, after Grenell had served as Trump’s acting U.S. director of national intelligence, he quietly met with an influential Maduro ally, Jorge Rodríguez, in Mexico City, without informing the State Department or National Security Council, said Elliott Abrams, who was special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term.

Abrams said he first learned of that meeting from a journalist.

“I have no idea what went on in that meeting because Grenell would not tell us,” Abrams said. Grenell was part of the administration but was “between jobs” at the time. “It was highly irregular to go off on his own and meet with representatives of a hostile regime in that way and then not inform us what happened.”

Abrams argued that Friday’s meeting in Caracas was “very dangerous.” Trump’s message for the Venezuelan government “could be delivered to Maduro without a face-to-face meeting; that is a gift to him.”

The meeting, Abrams argued, reveals the level of authority that Grenell will wield in the administration, and it appears to “step on” Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first official trip abroad, a journey through Latin America with stops in Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

“You are usurping the secretary of state’s position as the Trump administration official who is going to Latin America first to set the tone for the relationship.”

Rubio has long opposed negotiations with Maduro. Reporters asked an aide Friday whether Rubio supported Grenell’s trip.

Grenell will not be engaging in a “negotiation in exchange for anything,” responded Mauricio Claver Carone, the State Department’s special envoy for Latin America. The trip doesn’t “change the secretary’s position.”

Grenell, Claver Carone said, was going to Venezuela with two demands: Venezuela must take back its “criminals and gangs” and “American hostages need to be released immediately.”

“All I would do … is to urge the Maduro government, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, to heed to Special Envoy Ric Grenell’s message and to his demands and what he puts on the table because ultimately there will be consequences otherwise.”

González told The Post this month that a deportation deal between Trump and Maduro would deliver Maduro a political victory.

Negotiating directly with Maduro would allow the autocrat to “use returning Venezuelans to his political advantage,” González warned. He and his team have urged U.S. officials to send Venezuelan deportees to a third country instead.

Earlier this month, Trump posted on his Truth Social account hailing González and opposition leader María Corina Machado as “freedom fighters,” and described González as president elect.

On the day of Trump’s inauguration, Grenell said he had spoken with multiple officials in Venezuela and would begin meetings early the next day.

“Diplomacy is back,” Grenell wrote on X. “Talking is a tactic.”

During his first administration, Trump recognized a different opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the country’s rightful leader. He also imposed “maximum pressure” on Caracas — sanctioning the oil that is its main source of income.

Under the Biden administration, the Treasury Department allowed Chevron, the main U.S. oil company with operations in Venezuela, to restart production and sell the Venezuelan oil it pumps to the United States. U.S. and European companies are now allowed to provide the chemicals, previously supplied by Iran, needed to extract Venezuela’s heavy crude.

Biden officials, in quiet talks in Qatar, negotiated a deal with Maduro in which the autocrat would allow a fair presidential election and ease political repression in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions. That deal ultimately fell apart, and the Biden administration partially reimposed the sanctions it had lifted.

Rubio and other Trump allies have long demanded a return to heavy sanctions. Oil industry executives, whose support Trump has at times courted, have argued that more sanctions will only push Venezuela closer to China and Iran, while bumping up U.S. gas prices.

But Claver Carone said in a news conference in Spanish on Friday that there will be no “negotiations over oil.”

“The United States does not need Venezuelan oil,” he said. “President Trump has made clear from the start that the United States will be independent on energy issues and will be an exporter.”

washingtonpost.com 01 31 2025