Borjas, a member of the Popular Will party, was one of hundreds of individuals that Venezuela’s socialist regime kept as political prisoners. The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional detailed that officials from the regime’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) unjustly detained Borjas in Maracaibo, Zulia, on January 9, 2025, during a peaceful protest in support of Edmundo González, who defeated Nicolás Maduro in the sham July 2024 sham presidential election.
Since then, Borjas spent over a year in captivity at the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua. Tocorón is infamously known as the main headquarters of Tren de Aragua, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), until September 2023, when the Venezuelan regime “raided” and emptied the prison. At the time of the “raid,” the gang had completely transformed the facility, adding amenities such as its own zoo, baseball field, bars, a casino, a nightclub, a bank, a pool, a cryptocurrency farm, and playgrounds. In August 2024, now-deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro ordered his officials to turn Tocorón into a “re-education center” for anti-socialists.
The Venezuelan regime reportedly released Borjas on Sunday alongside several other political prisoners and, on that same day, he returned to his home in Maracaibo. A video first published by Venezuelan former lawmaker Lester Toledo and then shared by several local outlets shows Borjas wearing a teddy bear costume on his return, surprising his two minor daughters. A teary-eyed Borjas takes off the costume’s head and embraces his children.
Days after his unjust detention, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had granted precautionary measures in favor of Borjas and Venezuelan activist Manuel Muñoz, citing a serious, urgent risk of suffering irreparable harm to their rights. Muñoz was released on January 15, 2025.
According to the Venezuelan non-government organization Foro Penal, Venezuela’s socialist regime kept 863 political prisoners as of the end of 2025. on January 8, 2026, days after the U.S. carried out a law enforcement operation to capture Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the socialist-controlled National Assembly — and brother of “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez — announced that the regime would release an “important number” of Venezuelan and foreign nationals kept as political prisoners.
Hours after the announcement, President Donald Trump revealed in a Truth Social post that he cancelled a second wave of attacks in Venezuela after the ruling socialists had agreed to release a “large number” of political prisoners.
At press time, according to information published by Foro Penal on Monday morning, only 266 political prisoners have been confirmed to have been released by the organization since Jorge Rodríguez’s January 8 announcement — 104 of whom were freed on Sunday according to Foro Penal’s president Alfredo Romero. The 266 confirmed releases represents roughly 30 percent of the total 867 political prisoners confirmed by Foro Penal.
The confirmed releases over the past hours include 25-year-old Kevin Orozco, who remained unjustly detained at Tocorón since 2024 for his alleged “connection with post-election protests.” Orozco’s release reportedly occurred four days after his mother, Yarelis Salas, passed away on January 21 after she suffered a heart attack during a vigil outside the infamous prison calling for the liberation of the political prisoners detained at the center.
The Venezuelan socialist regime denies that it holds political prisoners and instead claims that the releases are part of orders issued by Nicolás Maduro days before his capture to “review of cases of people who were detained for acts of violence, for attacking the Venezuelan people themselves.” Venezuelan Interior Minister — and long suspected drug lord — Diosdado Cabello claimed this month that the released men and women are “criminals” who are being given “another opportunity” by the regime.
Delcy Rodríguez reportedly claimed in a Friday broadcast that “626 ex-incarcerations” had allegedly taken place in Venezuelan as of that day. Rodríguez stated at the time that she would hold a phone conversation on Monday with U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk and request that his office “verify” the regime’s “ex-incarceration” lists. Foro Penal questioned Rodríguez’s claims and said that, up until that day, only 151 individuals had been released so far.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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