Andry Hernández-Romero, a gay makeup artist who sought asylum in the U.S. due to persecution in Venezuela but was deported to a prison in El Salvador, has been released as part of a prisoner swap — but he's being sent back to Venezuela instead of the U.S.

"Perhaps you have the power to trade me away," Ryan Routh wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.

Prisoner swaps occur between two countries, usually involved in a conflict of some sort, when they find it mutually beneficial to release political prisoners, prisoners of war, people charged with espionage,