Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro shakes hands with a state oil company PDVSA worker during the May Day celebrations in Caracas, Venezuela May 1, 2022.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro shakes hands with a state oil company PDVSA worker during the May Day celebrations in Caracas, Venezuela May 1, 2022. Reuters / LEONARDO FERNANDEZ VILORIA

Venezuela arrested three U.S. citizens earlier this year accused of trying to enter the South American country illegally and is currently holding them, according to the U.S. State Department and people familiar with the matter.

President Nicolas Maduro's government has sought to keep the three Americans' arrests quiet while continuing nascent diplomatic contacts with the Biden administration, one of the sources said.

The three men being detained are in addition to eight other Americans long known to have been jailed in Venezuela, including five former executives of Citgo Petroleum, a U.S.-based unit of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA.

The Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Associated Press was first to report on the additional prisoners.

"We can confirm the arrest of U.S. citizens in Venezuela in January and March of this year," a State Department spokesperson said. "We take seriously our commitment to assist U.S. citizens abroad. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment."

The U.S. government considers the three men, all arrested in separate incidents, to be wrongfully detained, according to the person familiar with the matter. U.S. officials did not immediately confirm their names. It is unclear why they traveled to Venezuela.

Los Angeles lawyer Eyvin Hernandez, 44, and Texas computer programmer Jerrel Kenemore, 52, were both detained in March, while a third unnamed American was taken into custody in January, the Associated Press reported.

The March arrests followed Venezuela's release of two Americans earlier in the month, shortly after a visit by the highest-level U.S. delegation in years.

A second U.S. delegation that visited in June failed to secure the release of any of the remaining prisoners.

U.S. officials have used the visits not only to try free detained Americans but to coax Maduro's government to restart stalled negotiations with the country's opposition, according to people familiar with the matter.

The tenuous re-engagement after years of hostilities between the United States and OPEC member Venezuela has come as Russia's war against Ukraine has hit global oil supplies.

But talks during last month's U.S. visit to Caracas did not include Venezuela's oil sector, under U.S. sanctions since 2019, a source said.