What Next | How Trump Brought Home a Murderer

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ 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. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:07.2	It was a classic summer Friday news dump. This time last month, several outlets started reporting
1:13.9	that the United States government had planes in the air. There was a massive prisoner swap underway.
1:21.0	More than 250 Venezuelan migrants who had been sent from the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador were being freed in exchange
1:29.7	for 10 American citizens and permanent residents who were imprisoned in Venezuela.
1:35.1	People read about or saw or heard in some way about this prisoner exchange that resulted
1:40.9	in the release of these men to Venezuela and think in some sense that that is the end of this story.
	...

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