Venezuelan Regime Hunts for Foreign Hostages to Pressure Its Rivals

Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has in recent years secured the freedom of his top financier and two of his nephews in prisoner exchanges with the Biden administration.

Now, the regime is stocking up on foreign detainees—including Americans—who analysts say could serve as bargaining chips with the incoming Trump administration and allied governments. More than 50 foreign passport holders have been detained by Venezuela’s security forces since the end of July when the regime began its crackdown on opponents who, along with the U.S., say Maduro stole an election he had actually lost. Most of the detainees are being held on allegations of espionage or terrorism.

The latest foreigner to be nabbed was Nahuel Gallo, 33 years old, a corporal in Argentina’s gendarme police assigned to a remote border crossing with Chile. Arrested while traveling to Venezuela on Dec. 8 to spend the holidays with his wife and toddler, Gallo was accused of terrorism in a case that infuriated Argentine President Javier Milei. His administration calls the detention a kidnapping.

“This is no longer just an anti-gringo thing,” said Eric Farnsworth, a former U.S. diplomat at the Council of the Americas policy group in Washington. “Now Venezuela’s message to neighbors is, ‘If you upset us, your citizens are also at risk.’” [...]

Maduro’s rule over Venezuela since 2013 has been marked by economic calamity, charges of election rigging and the exodus of some eight million migrants, a quarter of the population. He also has increasingly used hostages as leverage with foreign adversaries, much like Venezuela’s allies Russia, Cuba and Iran, Farnsworth noted.

“It’s a distressingly common tactic, but people do it because it works,” he said...

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