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The decision to free an American convicted of murder in a prisoner swap with Venezuela threatened to undercut President Trump’s claims of keeping the worst of the worst out of the United States.
By Hamed AleazizJulie Turkewitz and José Bautista
Hamed Aleaziz reported from Washington, Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia, and Jose Bautista from Madrid.
Aug. 1, 2025, 12:02 p.m. ET
By the time the United States was extracting a group of Americans and legal U.S. residents from a prison in Venezuela last month, some State Department officials had come to an uncomfortable realization.
One of the prisoners had been convicted of murdering three people in Spain in 2016. And soon he would be on his way home, having his photo taken alongside those deemed by the United States to have been wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela.
How were they going to explain that to the American people?
On July 18, the day of the prisoner release, U.S. officials tried to figure out whether and how to acknowledge that Washington was bringing home Dahud Hanid Ortiz, whose case seemed to undercut President Trump’s claims of keeping the worst of the worst out of the United States.
In an internal email exchange that was obtained by The New York Times, State Department officials debated whether to include Mr. Hanid Ortiz in a public statement to be published that afternoon about the people being released, 10 including him.
“We had understood that we don’t want to refer to him as a hostage or wrongfully detained, which is why we said nine,” a press official wrote.
Michael Kozak, the career official who oversees diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere, replied: “Well then we probably should not have asked for him. Can we now extradite him to Spain? We did get the S.O.B. released.”
