Caracas: Venezuela on Friday released 10 jailed US citizens and permanent residents in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the US to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, officials said.

The complex, 3-country arrangement represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Tru­mp in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abro­ad and lands Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a swap he proposed months ago.

“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, thanking Bukele, a Trump ally. Bukele said El Salvador had handed over the Venezuelan nationals in its custody. Maduro described on Friday as “a day of blessings and good news for Venezuela”. He called it “the perfect day for Venezuela.”

Venezuelans leave El Salvador mega-prison 

Central to the deal are over 250 Venezuelan migrants freed by El Salvador, which in March agreed to a $6 million payment from the Trump administration to house them in its notorious prison. 

That arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly remove the men that his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang, teeing up a legal fight that reached the US Supreme Court. The administration did not provide evidence to back up those claims.

Judge limits part of court order blocking Trump’s election overhaul

New York: A federal judge on Friday modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the US.

The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary injunction that US District Court Judge Denise J Casper granted on June 13 in a case by Democratic state attorneys general. The judge said on Friday the part of Trump’s order directing certain federal agencies to assess people’s US citizenship when they ask for voter registration forms will now only be blocked in the 19 states that filed the lawsuit. Election law experts said the modification will have little, if any, practical effect because a judge in a different lawsuit filed against the executive order also blocked the federal agencies from obeying the mandate in all 50 states.