Dahud Hanid Ortiz a Venezuelan American and former US Marine, Ortiz recently returned to the United States. Venezuelan authorities released him from a Venezuelan prison as part of a widely condemned and legally dubious prisoner exchange. In January 2024, Ortiz was finally brought to justice for the 2027 Madrid, Spain triple homicide that shook the country. He went on to fatally stab a taxi driver and law firm client in 2016 before burning the law office down. His release continues to raise grave alarm within the victims’ families and survivors of the attack. They don’t trust the alternatives because they feel that the system has already betrayed them.
In an unusual high-profile internationally negotiated prisoner exchange, Ortiz was flown to Texas. U.S. officials from the Trump administration greeted him with open arms, as did high-level officials from El Salvador and Venezuela. This exchange may have included some of the other US prisoners repatriated by the US from Venezuela. Unsurprisingly, there has been outcry over Ortiz’s addition to the swap. They make the argument that he was not a political prisoner at all, but rather a convicted murderer.
The case against Ortiz was noteworthy, and captivated massive swathes of national media coverage, largely because its violent nature. He had been a Venezuelan citizen at the time of the murders in Spain. After the incident occurred, Venezuela did not extradite him to Spain to face charges but chose to try him in his own country instead. On January 2024, a Venezuelan court sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Victims’ families, particularly that of survivor Salas, expressed shock at Ortiz’s release. Salas said, “We all feel like we’ve been duped, backstabbed and abandoned.” He insisted that Dahud Hanid Ortiz was not a political prisoner. Rather, he was a criminal thug for whom a Venezuelan court convicted and sentenced that man.
Ortiz’s release drew pushback from leading experts on international law and human rights. Laura Cristina Dib, a policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), discussed the due process violations present in the case. She spoke about the broader implications of these violations. As Ms. Reilly underlined, the US should have a due diligence obligation. Now that this person is free, the investigation should proceed in accordance with the law, with a strong acknowledgment to all of the victims who dread his freedom. She underscored that all three countries were complicit in violating the right to due process. This means all of them held within their borders.
Marco Rubio, a leading US Senator who has been supportive of releasing other Americans seized by Venezuela, celebrated their release but decried Ortiz’s plight. He firmly stated that the behavior of representatives from the Venezuelan regime is intolerable. They violated the basic tenets of US due process by arresting and jailing US nationals under dubious circumstances. Each one of these wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela is now safe and on their way home to our homeland.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, further noted Ortiz’s release undercuts earlier US messaging on prisoner swaps. For almost four months, dozens of men were incarcerated inside CECOT. During that entire ordeal, the Trump administration repeatedly claimed the men were not in US custody, claiming that only El Salvador had jurisdiction. As Reichlin-Melnick noted, the US lost its best opportunity to win the release of every American detained in Venezuela. Most of these people described experiencing torture and having survived in extreme conditions.