Venezuela receives plane with 178 deported from the United States

A plane from Honduras with 178 Venezuelan migrants deported from including women, landed at dawn on Friday (28) in the as part of the restoration of Washington agreed deportation flights after one month of suspension. The group is the second to return to Venezuela after the resumption of flights last weekend.

Venezuela and the United States, who broke relations in 2019, exchanged accusations of a boycott of the deportation agreement reached in January and which led to the coordination of three flights with 366 deported in February. “This flight brings 178 of the compatriots that were (…) stigmatized in the United States,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello told the press at Maiquetia International Airport, which serves Caracas.

The group has 13 women, he added. The resumption of flights also occurred after the United States government accused 238 Venezuelans of belonging to the dreaded ‘Tren de Aragua’ gang and sent the group to the Terrorism Center (CECOT), a maximum security penitentiary in El Salvador, invoking a 1798 law.

“We continue to demand the freedom of the compatriots who are there in El Salvador, who are kidnapped in El Salvador,” the minister insisted. The American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, defended on Thursday the mass deportation to El Salvador. “We have reason to believe that they were actually pushed to the United States in large quantities by the Venezuela regime,” Rubio told the press.

The first group of United States deported Venezuelans arrived in February 11, with 190 men, from El Paso, Texas, and nine days later arrived 176, which departed from Honduras after they left the military base of Guantanamo. But Washington questioned the pace of deportations. As a reprisal, revoked the license that allowed the operation of the Chevron oil company in Venezuela.

Caracas denounced that the American department was “blocking” the flights. Two other flights with 553 migrants from Mexico arrived last month in Venezuela, at first with Venezuelans who failed to enter the United States. According to the UN, almost eight million Venezuelans left their country on an escape from the economic crisis that began to be reversed in 2021. The government ensures that more than 1.2 million returned.

*With information from AFP
Posted by Victor Oliveira