Wife of former American detainee released after more than a year in Venezuelan prison
The wife of a once-detained American citizen was released this week after being held for more than a year in a Venezuelan prison following their arrest while traveling to the South American nation to meet her family.
Renzo Humanchumo Castillo, a Peruvian- American who was detained for close to a year by Venezuelan authorities, told Fox News Digital that his Venezuelan wife, Rosa Carolina Chirino Zambrano, as well as her friend and the taxi driver they were with, were released after being imprisoned and charged with espionage due to their contact with him.
He spoke with Zambrano following her release, he said, their first contact since December 2024 when they were confronted by Venezuelan authorities near the country’s border with Colombia.
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“It was surreal,” Castillo recalled of the conversation. “She got teary, you know, but she was like… ‘hey baby, I’m out.’ Now my main concern is how do I get her here with me.”
Castillo, who lives in Southern California, was detained after crossing the border into Venezuela, along with his wife and her friend, who were in a taxi. After being questioned at length by Venezuelan authorities, he was charged with terrorism and conspiring to kill Nicolas Maduro, then the country’s president, who was recently captured by U.S. forces in a daring military operation.
“They got me as a professional hitman sent by the CIA, and (that) I was there to overthrow the government and kill Maduro and Diosdado (Cabello),” Castillo said.
Diosdado Cabello, known as the “octopus,” runs Venezuela’s security apparatus and is considered one of the country’s most feared government figures. The U.S. has accused him of narco-terrorism and several other crimes. The State Department has issued a $25 million reward for his arrest and conviction.
“Cabello, he presented me on the news, and then he put me on a chart saying that I came here to overthrow the government,” Castillo said. “Me and some other Americans.”
After spending months in Venezuela’s notorious “El Rodeo” prison, Castillo was freed in a prisoner swap in July 2025. However, his wife remained in detention.
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Castillo said he was initially questioned by Venezuelan authorities who accused him of being a “commando” or some kind of military operator.
A search of his cell phone only heightened their suspicions when they found images of him wearing a protective vest and other tactical gear. However, Castillo said he works in private security and executive protection and has never served in the military.
The gear was used for work, he said.
He was eventually detained and transferred to “El Rodeo” where he endured beatings and other forms of torture, he said. In one instance, he was hung by his arms like a piñata and beaten.
“They had me hanging. And like my feet were still kind of touching the floor,” he said. “They just hit me for maybe at least five to eight hours, just hanging… just not even questions anymore. But you can feel the joy, how much they wanted to hit me, hurt me, you know?”
Castillo got in trouble several times while at the prison, he said, for speaking out of a window in his cell where he would sometimes get updates on events outside the facility. Stressed about not knowing what happened to his wife, he went on a hunger strike in an effort to write a letter to her, he said.
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Castillo met Zambrano during a visit to Peru to reunite with old classmates from grade school. One night, he went to a bar with friends where the pair met and struck up a friendship.
That was followed by multiple trips to Peru, where she lived, before they got married. On his last journey, the couple met in Colombia and traveled via road to her home country to meet his in-laws for the first time, Castillo said.
After crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border, they were separately detained and their misfortune began.
Since Zambrano is a Venezuelan citizen, she was not part of the prisoner swap that freed her husband. Despite now being free, she remains under the watchful eye of the Venezuelan government, Castillo said.
In the meantime, Castillo is working to get Zambrano to California. He said he plans to reach out to the State Department. Despite his wife’s citizenship status, his optimism heightened following Maduro’s capture earlier this month.
“It was that moment when, inside of me, I felt I was going to be able to see my wife again,” he said. “The chances of me seeing my wife again just went from like, from nothing to like a hundred. It really lifted my spirit.”
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“It took Americans and it took foreigners to be kidnapped for the world to put eyes on Venezuela,” he said.
On Tuesday, Venezuela’s interim government released at least four Americans imprisoned during Maduro’s regime. The release was the first involving U.S. citizens since Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces.
“We welcome the release of detained Americans in Venezuela,” a State Department official said Tuesday. “This is an important step in the right direction by the interim authorities.”
On Wednesday, Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez said she spoke with President Donald Trump by phone during a “long and courteous” conversation. The pair discussed a “bilateral work agenda for the benefit of our peoples, as well as pending matters between our governments.”
On Truth Social, Trump said topics of discussion included oil, minerals, trade and national security.
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“This partnership between the United States of America and Venezuela will be a spectacular one FOR ALL. Venezuela will soon be great and prosperous again, perhaps more so than ever before!” he wrote.
Castillo praised the Trump administration for addressing the Maduro regime and his action in Venezuela.
“I feel like the current administration is doing the hard work that it hasn’t been done,” he said. “Those things that sometimes people don’t want to see and are afraid to say, well, they’re doing it now. And I am very thankful to the administration. I’m very thankful to my president. Very thankful to (Secretary of State) Marco Rubio, because they did all of this. They got us out.”
Nobel Foundation weighs in after Machado presents Peace Prize to Trump
The Nobel Foundation weighed in Sunday after Venezuela’s opposition leader gifted her Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump.
Maria Corina Machado gave her Peace Prize to Trump during a meeting at the White House last week. The Nobel Foundation pushed back on the legitimacy of such a transfer on Sunday, however.
“One of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration. The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations. It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who ‘have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,’ and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize,” the foundation wrote in a statement.
“A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed,” the statement continued.
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Machado explained her decision to give Trump her award in an interview with Fox News.
“He deserves it,” Machado told “FOX & Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. “It was a very emotional moment.”
Machado said she presented the prize to the president on behalf of the Venezuelan people, crediting him for the historic work he did in liberating the country from its dictator Nicolás Maduro.
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“[Venezuelans] appreciate so much what he has done for, not only the freedom of the Venezuelan people, but I would say the whole hemisphere,” she said.
As a longtime Maduro critic, Machado has been vocal in supporting Trump’s unprecedented removal of the disgraced Venezuelan leader, prompting her to credit him with the prize for the historic capture.
Trump appeared pleased and gratified by Machado’s gesture.
“It was my Great Honor to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
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The Norwegian Nobel Institute had tried to shut down the transfer before Machado met with Trump earlier this month.
“Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” the institute said in a statement. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
Venezuela’s acting leader was once a DEA ‘priority target’: report
Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez has appeared in U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intelligence files dating back several years and was labeled a “priority target” in 2022, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents show the DEA has intelligence files on Rodríguez going back to at least 2018, with her name appearing in multiple investigations across several U.S. and international field offices, though she has never been publicly accused of any criminal wrongdoing, the outlet reported.
The DEA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The “priority target” designation is used by the agency to focus investigative resources on individuals or organizations believed to play a significant role in major drug trafficking or money laundering operations affecting the United States, according to a 2008 DEA assessment.
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Rodríguez was formally sworn in as Venezuela’s new leader on Jan. 5, just two days after U.S. forces extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from their compound in Caracas in an early-morning military operation.
Maduro and Flores were taken into U.S. custody and flown to New York to face federal charges.
Maduro is charged with four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine-guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine-guns and destructive devices. His wife is charged with three counts: cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine-guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine-guns and destructive devices.
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The White House has been working with Rodríguez in the weeks since Maduro was ousted. President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he spoke with Rodríguez by phone and praised her as a “terrific person.”
“We discussed a lot of things and I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” he said.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado criticized Rodríguez as the Trump administration engages with the Maduro ally, arguing she does not represent the Venezuelan people.
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“I want to insist on this: Delcy Rodríguez, yes, she’s a communist. She’s the main ally and representation of the Russian regime, the Chinese and the Iranians, but that’s not the Venezuelan people and that’s not the armed forces, as well,” Machado said at a Heritage Foundation event on Friday.
“So I am profoundly, profoundly confident that we will have an orderly transition. This is a complex phase we are in right now. Some of the dirty work is being done by them,” she added. “But then, the result of a stable transition will be a proud Venezuela who is going to be the best ally the United States has ever had in the Americas.”
Piers Morgan clashes with Roger Waters, accuses the rocker of propping up dictators while attacking Trump
Piers Morgan slammed Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters for “trying to prop up terrorists and powerful dictatorships” while Waters criticized President Donald Trump as “demented” and “evil.”
Waters appeared on Friday’s episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where he lambasted Trump as a “real scumbag,” and, according to Morgan, came to the defense of leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and ex-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
During the interview, Waters argued that Putin “really has tried not to hurt civilians” during his ongoing invasion of Ukraine and referred to Maduro as the “duly democratically elected leader” of Venezuela despite his election being widely labeled fraudulent by international observers and critics within his own country.
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“I support [Maduro] because he’s the duly democratically elected leader of a country that represents all the principles of Bolivarian and Chávez revolutionary process,” Waters asserted. “So, so he represents the people of Venezuela [who] live a completely different way of life than in the United States, where I live, or in England, where you live.”
Waters said of Trump, “He’s demented. He’s obviously very evil.”
The rock star added that the Trump administration “made up the daft story” of Maduro being a drug trafficker to justify invading Venezuela, calling the claim “errant nonsense.”
Later on in the interview, Waters said the West should “be careful what they wish for” in regard to ousting Putin, warning that whoever replaces him may be far worse than he is.
“Then you will see something completely different, because Putin has conducted the special military operation with his gloves off. He really has tried not to hurt civilians and so on and so forth,” he argued.
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After Morgan expressed his puzzlement at what Waters said about Putin, the Pink Floyd star told the host, “See, you know nothing, Piers.”
“Vladimir Putin illegally invaded a sovereign democratic country and started bombing the s— out of it. Why? Why would you, on any level, try to excuse or defend it?” Morgan asked.
Contrasting Waters’ remarks about the United States with his comments about countries like Russia and Venezuela, Morgan asked the musician why he doesn’t leave America for one of those countries.
“You rail a lot about America and about Donald Trump, but you live in America, right? I mean, there’s inconsistency there. Why live somewhere if you hate it so much or hate the leaders so much? Why don’t you act to the point of principle, get off your backside and go and live in Iran or Venezuela? Live under one of these regimes that you think aren’t too bad,” Morgan railed.
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“Piers, do stop, do stop. Maybe I will, but to answer your question about me being successful in rock and roll and blah, yes I am, very and blah blah blah and all of that. Why do I do all of this? Because I believe — I hope you’re listening — I believe in right and wrong. I have a moral compass. … I have moral compass which I allow to guide my actions,” Waters shot back.
After telling Morgan that he appeared on the show to be a “voice for the voiceless,” Morgan questioned who the “voiceless” people were that Waters was claiming to be speaking out for.
“Although it suits you to say, ‘I only stand up for the voiceless,’ actually, it sounds to me like you like to stand up for terror groups and call them resistance. You like to stand up for dictators and say they’re just massively misunderstood guys,” he told Waters.
“So, when I look at your worldview, I don’t see a guy — with all due respect, Roger — who’s standing up for the voiceless and powerless. I see somebody trying to prop up terrorists and powerful dictatorships and regimes.”
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FAA warns about flying in Central, South America and eastern Pacific, citing possible ‘military activities’
The Federal Aviation Administration warned pilots of U.S. airlines about flying over the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico, Central America and parts of South America, citing possible “military activities” and satellite navigation interference.
The warning was issued Friday in a series of Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) distributed by the FAA, which said, “Potential risks exist for aircraft at all altitudes, including during overflight and the arrival and departure phases of flight.”
“The FAA issued flight advisory Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) for specified areas of Mexico, Central American, Panama, Bogata, Guayaquil, and Mazatlán Oceanic Flight Regions, and in airspace within the eastern Pacific Ocean,” the agency also told USA Today.
It’s unclear what prompted the advisories, which tell aircraft operators to “exercise caution.” Fox News Digital has reached out to the FAA for comment.
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The notices come after months of U.S. military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.
In November, the FAA had warned all pilots to exercise caution when flying in the airspace over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”
In December, a JetBlue flight from the Caribbean nation of Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker.
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Earlier this month, the Trump administration carried out a military operation capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
President Donald Trump also recently told Fox News that the U.S. will expand operations against drug cartels.
“We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in early January. “The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country.”
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The latest FAA notices will be in effect for 60 days.