How Trump Brought Home a Murderer
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Characteristic of this administration’s over-the-top but never-thought-out immigration enforcement, Trump traded more than 250 Venezuelans who had been deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison for 10 Americans who were being held prisoner in Venezuela—including a man convicted of a triple homicide.
Guest: Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 1:06.7 | It was a classic Summer Friday news dump. This time last month, several outlets started reporting that the United States government had planes in the air. There was a massive prisoner swap underway. More than 250 Venezuelan migrants who had been sent from the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador were being freed in exchange for 10 American citizens and permanent residents |
| 1:32.1 | who were imprisoned in Venezuela. |
| 1:34.8 | People read about or saw or heard in some way about this prisoner exchange |
| 1:39.9 | that resulted in the release of these men to Venezuela |
| 1:42.8 | and think in some sense that that is the end of this story. |
| 1:50.8 | That's Jonathan Blitzer. |
| 1:52.5 | He is an immigration reporter for the New Yorker. |
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