This development comes shortly after Trump’s envoy, Richard Grenell, met Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas.
The expulsion flights of illegal migrants from the United States to Venezuela resumed as part of the long-standing anti-immigration campaign by US President Donald Trump.
Two Venezuelans planes, which transported around 190 people together, left a base of the US army on Monday in El Paso, Texas, bound for the South American country.
With the exception of a brief period under the Biden administration in October 2023, the United States expulsion flights to Venezuela were interrupted for years.
Due to a serious economic crisis and political disorders during the reign of authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro ‘, nearly eight million Venezuelans left the country between 2014 and 2024.
From October 2023 to September 2024, the Venezuelans represented the second largest number of people seen, all nationalities combined, on the southern United States, according to the United States customs and border protection service.
The resumption of expulsion flights comes shortly after Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, went to Caracas and met Maduro, following which six Americans were released from the Venezuelan guard.
On Monday, the White House shared a photo of the special envoy supervising the embarkation of migrants on one of the two guest flights, and Richard Grenell himself went to X to thank Donald Trump for the deportations.
“Two illegal immigrant planes left El Paso today towards Venezuela – paid by the Venezuelans“He wrote.
Venezuelan state media also covered the arrival of flights.
“”This is the world we want, a world of peace, understanding, dialogue and cooperation“Said Nicolas Maduro.
In a previous statement, the Venezuelan government said it wanted to repatriate thousands of its citizens who have emigrated in recent years.
As part of the general repression of immigration led by Mr. Trump, thefts began to bring back immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. However, a federal judge of New Mexico blocked on Sunday, as a preventive basis, the transfer of three Venezuelans to the American military base located in this city.
According to the lawyers of these men their customers “correspond to the profile of the persons that the administration has placed primarily in detention in Guantanamo, namely Venezuelans detained in the region of El Paso under (false) accusations of links with the gang of the Tren of Aragua “.
