The news may have surprised someone unprepared: the United States and Venezuela, two governments at odds rhetorically and ideologically, exchanged prisoners this Friday.

The exchange involves the release of 10 Americans detained in Venezuela and the repatriation of 252 Venezuelan migrants whom the US deported to El Salvador this year, officials from the latter two countries reported.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the agreement also involves "the release of Venezuelan political prisoners," without specifying how many.

But the exchange is also a confirmation of the capacity for pragmatic mutual dealings that the governments of Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro have developed, beyond their differences.

"This is exactly how diplomacy is supposed to work," Cynthia tells him. Arnson, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of International Relations in Washington, told BBC Mundo.

“We were enemies”

When Trump took office for his second term in January, many expected him to toughen US policies toward Venezuela’s socialist government.

These expectations stemmed in part from his first term (2017-2021), when Trump unsuccessfully sought Maduro’s downfall through diplomatic isolation, sanctions, and statements about a “possible military option” for Venezuela.

“We were enemies with Venezuela,” Trump himself said in August, in the midst of his campaign to return to the White House, and called Maduro a “dictator.”

However, after his return to power, the surprises.

Richard Grenell, a Trump envoy, traveled to Caracas on January 31, met with Maduro, and returned home with six American prisoners released by his host.

He also said he had secured a commitment from Maduro to welcome back Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration.in exchange for the "enormous gift" that the "hope of a different future" represented for him.

In May, it was learned that Venezuela had released another American it had in prison, a veteran of his country's Air Force.

Then reports emerged of negotiations for a prisoner exchange like the one that just materialized this Friday.

The deal came to a standstill due to internal disagreements within the US government, The New York Times reported earlier this month.

And it specified that these differences were due to the fact that Grenell negotiated a more attractive pact for Caracas than the one that the State Department was seeking in parallel, since it allowed the oil company Chevron to maintain operations in Venezuela.

Chevron is a US company whose operations in Venezuela have become a crucial source of income for the Maduro government, but Washington announced in May that it would let its license expire.

It is not yet clear whether the detainee exchange agreement includes Chevron or other types of concessions.

"Both Rubio and Republicans in Congress do not seem willing to ease oil or other sanctions on the Venezuelan regime, while Grenell and perhaps even President Trump seem more open to allowing Chevron to extract oil from Venezuela," explains Arnson.

While this analyst suspects that the US will maintain a hard line towards Venezuela, others believe that at least now the less ideological and more transactional wing of the Trump administration has prevailed. over a more rigid one that includes those with ties to the Cuban and Venezuelan communities in the US, like Rubio.

Adam Isacson, a security and defense expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization known by its acronym Wola, points out that in the US, "those who are willing to make a deal with the Venezuelan government and even give it a propaganda victory won" this Friday.

Between the Trump and Maduro governments, "there is no love, but there is certainly less tension than during the years of (previous US President) Biden," Isacson tells BBC Mundo.

"A different standard"

The idea of a prisoner exchange between San Salvador and Caracas It emerged in April after the Trump administration deported 252 Venezuelans to the Central American country's Cecot mega-prison, known for housing former gang members. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said at the time that he was willing to send those detainees to Venezuela if the same number of "political prisoners" were released by the Maduro government, which called the proposal cynical.

But the completion of a swap that also involves U.S. citizens calls into question previous White House claims that it lacked authority over the migrants it sent to El Salvador in exchange for millions in payments to the Bukele government.

“It’s clear that El Salvador would not have done this without the participation and approval of U.S. officials. So that contradicts what they were telling the courts,” Isacson said.

Bukele, who has become a key Trump ally in the region and is accused by critics of violating democratic norms in his country, said that many of the Venezuelans he repatriated on Friday “face multiple counts of murder, robbery, rape, and other serious crimes.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed, without offering clear evidence, that the Venezuelans it deported to El Salvador outside of normal legal proceedings were members of the Tren de Aragua, a group it recently designated a “foreign terrorist organization.”

But that claim also seems in doubt now, as Washington agrees to let those same Venezuelans return to their home countries, Isacson says.

“Can you imagine the U.S. agreeing to send al-Qaeda members back to Pakistan, or ISIS members back to Syria?” he compares.

“It’s a different standard of terrorism, between quotes, especially since we know from the news that most of those men probably had no links to the criminal group at all."