The guards wore name tags that read “Hitler” and “Demon” and covered their faces with ski masks. The Americans in the Venezuelan prison were confined to cement cells, beaten, pepper-sprayed and subjected to what one prisoner called “psychological torture.”
Three months into their capture, the Americans were so filled with anger that they rebelled. They banged cell walls and kicked doors, they said, as other prisoners joined in, hundreds of them screaming for freedom until the concrete began to crack.
“Are you with me, my Venezuelans?” one of the prisoners, Gregory David Werber, yelled, a fellow inmate recalled.
“We are with you, gringo!” they yelled back.
Six American prisoners came home from Venezuela in late January, their freedom secured after an unusual and highly public visit by a Trump administration official to Caracas, the capital. Critics said the meeting between Richard Grenell, a special envoy, and Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocrat, gave legitimacy to a leader accused of widespread human rights abuses and stealing a recent election.
Others pointed out that it got the Americans home.
Now free and adjusting to their new lives, three of the former prisoners spoke at length with The New York Times about their detention, providing the most detailed look yet at their experiences.
Some described being hooded, handcuffed and kidnapped at legal border crossings after trying to enter as tourists. All offered a rare inside view of Mr. Maduro’s expanding strategy to push global leaders to do what he wants: He has amassed dozens of prisoners from around the world to use as leverage in negotiations.
Nine other U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents remain in Venezuelan custody, according to the State Department. In total, there are at least 68 foreign passport holders wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela, according to a watchdog group, Foro Penal, more than Mr. Maduro has ever held.
They are detained alongside roughly 900 Venezuelan political prisoners.
The foreigners come from Spain, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and elsewhere. Almost all were captured in the last year.
The expansion of this strategy comes as Mr. Maduro loses support at home and abroad and seeks ways to exert influence. His goals include the lifting of U.S. sanctions and recognition from leaders like President Trump.
The arrests of foreigners also come amid a tug of war inside the Trump administration over how to deal with Mr. Maduro, according to analysts. Advisers like Mr. Grenell have shown a willingness to engage in quick-hit transactional deals — a public visit for the freedom of prisoners.
Others, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, push a more isolationist approach meant to squeeze Mr. Maduro from power, while supporting the release of detainees.
A spokesman for the State Department said the U.S. government was working to secure the release of all Americans unjustly detained in Venezuela.
Mr. Grenell did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Venezuela’s communications minister, Freddy Ñáñez.
The Venezuelan government has accused some of the detained Americans of terrorism and plotting to kill Mr. Maduro.
The Americans still in detention include Jonathan Pagan, who had been running a bakery in Venezuela with his Venezuelan wife, according to the returned men.
They also include Jorge Vargas, an older man with health problems who returnees said had declined so much he needed help getting out of bed.
A third American is Joseph St. Clair, an Air Force veteran who did four tours in Afghanistan and had traveled to the region to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his father.
“He served his country,” said his father, Scott St. Clair. Mr. St. Clair was concerned about how his son’s PTSD would affect him in prison. He called on the Trump administration to do everything it could to get him out.
“I am in a very dark room,” the father said, “and I am looking for a sliver of light.”
The Capture
Venezuela — its mountains, its beaches, its people — called them.
It was last September. Mr. Werber, 62, a self-described software developer, was on a bucket-list trip through Latin America, he said.
David Guillaume, 30, was a traveling nurse from Florida with time on his hands. “I have three weeks,” he thought. “I just really want to do something different.”
David Estrella, 64, was a father of five from New Jersey living part-time in Ecuador. He just wanted to see friends, he said.
All were intrepid travelers, they explained, unaware that they were hurtling into a political booby trap.
Mr. Werber acquired a visa and traveled the country — driving along Venezuela’s coastline, trekking Mount Roraima — before officials at an airport pulled him aside on Sept. 19, he said, locked him at a military base, flew him to Caracas and left him in a high-security prison called Rodeo One.
Detained alongside him was his girlfriend, a Venezuelan citizen.
Mr. Guillaume, who was detained the same day, and Mr. Estrella, who was detained on Sept. 9, didn’t even make it into the country before their captures. Both arrived at Cúcuta, on the Colombia-Venezuela border, seeking permission to enter as tourists.
After presenting his passport to Venezuelan officials, Mr. Estrella was led to a vehicle, he said, handcuffed, hooded and put on a plane to Caracas.
Mr. Guillaume and his fiancée, Jaralmy Barradas, a Venezuelan citizen, were sent to the capital by car.
In Caracas, Mr. Estrella recalled spending five days in a chair at a facility run by the country’s military counterintelligence agency. Handcuffs with inner spikes tore at his wrists, he said.
Officials searched his phone and questioned him, always with cameras rolling.
“It was clear that they didn’t know who I was,” he said, “or have any idea why they had grabbed me, besides that I was an American.”
Both men said they were also taken to Rodeo One, stripped to their underwear, photographed, shaved and given cells on a floor filled with foreigners.
Dozens and dozens of foreigners.
The Rebellion
A man called Shark ran the prison. The guards gave only their aliases — Bronco, Lucifer — which they wore on their lapels.
The cells, two and a half steps by five and a half steps, according to Mr. Estrella, were concrete with metal doors. The Americans at Rodeo One were confined to these boxes all day, they said.
Venezuelan prisoners, including dissident members of the military, were held on an upper floor; some were kept for weeks in a small room called the “punishment zone,” where they were stripped naked and given little to eat. Mr. Guillaume discovered this after a brief visit.
Shark ignored the Americans’ pleas to see lawyers and U.S. officials, they said.
Of all the U.S. detainees, Mr. Werber was perhaps the most experienced in this situation. He’d gotten out of U.S. prison two years before, after he was convicted of laundering money for a drug cartel.
Federal authorities said he had past convictions for credit card fraud, smuggling, grand theft and fleeing the law — in the 1980s, he escaped from a California prison. In a separate incident in the 1990s, he was apprehended after a high-speed car chase, according to news reports at the time, accused of using fake checks to buy Jet Skis and a Porsche.
Mr. Werber said all this was a “past part” of his life, that he had gone to Venezuela as a tourist — and to check out the bitcoin industry — with no plans to commit crimes.
“I’ve done things that are inexcusable,” he said. “But that’s not who I am now.”
At Rodeo One, he became something of a leader, called “captain” and “Furious G” by the others. And one morning, he broke.
“We’re all innocent!” he shouted, banging his cell door, he recalled. “Let us go!”
Others joined in, the men said. The fury spread. Metal welds began to pop. Concrete blocks shook loose.
Two inmates used the loose blocks as battering rams, Mr. Werber said, and their cell doors broke open.
But the feeling of victory did not last long.
The guards grabbed riot gear, pepper-sprayed the prisoners, flung bags over their heads and began to beat them, Mr. Guillaume said.
“One of the regiment leaders, he came by, he put his foot on my head,” Mr. Guillaume continued. “He was like, ‘Welcome to Venezuela. Welcome to hell.’”
The Release
In Washington, Mr. Trump had just become president, and in Caracas, Mr. Maduro was calling for a new start to bilateral relations. By Jan. 31, Mr. Trump had dispatched Mr. Grenell to Venezuela.
The meeting was a major win for the Venezuelan leader, who hadn’t had a public visit from a U.S. official in years.
The autocrat, smiling for photographers, agreed not only to release U.S. prisoners, but also to accept Venezuelans deported from the United States. This was key to Mr. Trump’s ambitions to deport millions of migrants.
Guards led Mr. Werber, Mr. Guillaume, Mr. Estrella and three others to a car. Mr. Guillaume could see the Caribbean coastline as they descended to the airport.
But it wasn’t until he was on the plane that he believed he was going home, he said.
In the air the men got a call from Mr. Trump.
Afterward, Mr. Estrella called the president “awesome,” and said he was grateful the administration had made their release a priority. But he was perplexed by the limited assistance he got upon arrival — he lost 40 pounds during detention, he said, and came home with serious nerve and back problems.
The night of their release, the men were left at a hotel “and that’s it,” he said. No medical exam beyond a vitals check. No visit from a psychologist. No invitation to a government rehabilitation program — something typically offered to returning prisoners.
It wasn’t until March that the men began getting calls from the State Department, they said, telling them Mr. Rubio had declared them “wrongfully detained,” a label that triggers years of access to help.
The State Department spokesman said the government was in touch with the returnees and seeking to provide them with additional support.
Six weeks after his release, Mr. Guillaume is living in Colombia, staying with the family of his fiancée, Ms. Barradas, while she is locked up.
She is among at least a dozen Venezuelans arrested alongside the Americans — their girlfriends, wives and in-laws. The American returnees believe they are all still in prison.
Mr. Guillaume said the detention of his girlfriend haunts him, making him feel “dishonorable.”
He is free but she is not, he said, and so his heart and happiness are still trapped in Venezuela.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research, and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán.