McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Two Venezuelan planes flew to the USA on Monday and returned house with deported Venezuelans, signaling a attainable enchancment in relations between longtime diplomatic adversaries and a victory for President Donald Trump in his efforts to get extra nations to take their individuals again.
The U.S. and Venezuelan governments individually confirmed the flights by Venezuelan airline Conviasa with out saying what number of had been aboard or disclosing their routes.
“Flights of Unlawful Aliens to Venezuela Resume,” the White Home mentioned in a put up on the “X” platform, saying they had been overseen by Richard Grennell, a high Trump adviser who not too long ago traveled to Venezuela.
The Venezuelan authorities confirmed the flights in an announcement that took situation with an “ill-intentioned” and “false” narrative across the presence of members of the Tren de Aragua gang in the USA. It mentioned most Venezuelan immigrants are respectable, hard-working individuals and that U.S. officers sought to stigmatize the South American nation.
Deportation flights from the U.S. to Venezuela had been halted for years however restarted for a short while underneath the Biden administration in October 2023 when a jet transported about 130 migrants house. Venezuelans started displaying up on the U.S. border with Mexico in giant numbers in 2021 and are at present one of many largest nationalities coming into illegally.
Monday’s flights got here days after the primary flights of immigrants to a U.S. navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala for these nations to take individuals who weren’t their residents.
A federal choose in New Mexico on Sunday preemptively blocked the switch of three Venezuelan males to Guantanamo Bay. Of their request for a short lived halt, legal professionals for the boys mentioned their shoppers “match the profile of these the administration has prioritized for detention in Guantanamo, i.e. Venezuelan males detained within the El Paso space with (false) prices of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang.”
Trump wrote after Grennell’s go to that the Maduro authorities had agreed to obtain “all Venezuela unlawful aliens who had been encamped within the U.S., together with gang members of Tren de Aragua,” and pay for his or her transportation. Six Individuals held in Venezuela had been launched on the time.
In its assertion Monday, the Venezuelan authorities didn’t touch upon any future flights.
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