U.S. deports migrants to Venezuela

Feb. 11, 2025

Two flights operated by Venezuela’s government picked up Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. and flew them to Caracas, yesterday. The operation comes two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, met with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and reached an agreement on migrant deportations.

Maduro’s government said it had been informed by U.S. authorities that several deportees were part of a criminal group called the Tren de Aragua, and that these passengers will be subject to interrogations upon arrival.

“In authorizing the flights, the United States is sending migrants back to a nation run by an autocrat who has spent years imprisoning political opponents and others he views as unpatriotic,” notes the New York Times.

Maduro said yesterday that he asked Grenell to lift all sanctions in exchange for receiving deported Venezuelans and insisted that Venezuelans have left their country en masse as a result of U.S. sanctions. “Migrants who return to Venezuela will recover their right to party,” he joked. (El País)

More Migration

• A U.S. federal judge barred the government from sending three detained Venezuelan men to the Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba. The Sunday decision marks the first legal front against the Trump administration’s new policy of sending undocumented migrants to the base better known as a detention center for alleged terrorists, reports the New York Times.

• “The case of the three Venezuelans is very specific and, therefore, hardly applicable to the situations of many other irregular migrants who have been detained. But it does highlight the multiple legal problems faced by the presidential order to transfer undocumented people to a place with one of the most sinister reputations on Earth,” according to El País.

• Tens of thousands of people who had appointments with U.S. immigration authorities into February have been stranded by the Trump administratino’s decision to cancel the program when he took office in January. Many of them are in limbo in Mexican border cities, reports the Associated Press.

• Mexico prepared for the new U.S. administration with greatly increased budgets for migration and refugees, reports El País.

• The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted an overloaded migrant boat carrying more than 130 people from Haiti, including small children, near the Florida Keys last week, reports the Miami Herald.

• Reports of human rights violations in the Dominican Republic’s campaign to deport Haitians are mounting, and range from unauthorized home raids to racial profiling to deporting breastfeeding mothers and unaccompanied minors, reports the Associated Press.

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Petro’s cabinet crisis

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called on his entire cabinet to tender resignations, on Sunday, in the aftermath of a rancorous televised government meeting that exposed deep fissures within the administration, report El País.

Close aides involved in a sprawling corruption scandal and now promoted to key posts — Armando Benedetti as chief-of-staff and Laura Sarabia to the Foreign Ministry — has driven a wedge between the president and traditional leftist allies, reports the Financial Times.

A former senator from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Benedetti is an experienced political operator who helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign, but has also been accused of corruption and violence against women, reports the Associated Press. (See also El País.)

Yesterday Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo resigned, and last week the minister of the environment and the minister of culture also left the government, saying in interviews that they did not want to work with Benedetti.

The crisis comes in the middle of a severe security crisis in the Catatumbo region, where more than 50,000 people have been displaced by illegal armed groups’ fighting.

More Colombia

• Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe denied charges of bribery and witness tampering in his opening statement before court. It is the first criminal trial of a former president in the country’s history, reports the Associated Press.

More Venezuela

• If Chilean government allegations that Venezuela’s government assassinated a dissident living in Santiago de Chile are true, “the case represents a dark escalation in” Maduro’s efforts to crush threats to his power according to the New York Times.

Mexico

• An investigation by Animal Político detected a massive, sixfold increase in U.S. citizens arrested in Mexico for offenses related to organized crime over the past six years. The data suggests that U.S. citizens have increasingly become pawns for Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs northwards and weapons and cash back across the border, reports the Guardian.

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum aims to have an anti-nepotism reform initiative she sent to Congress approved and implemented by the 2027 midterm elections, reports El País.

Guatemala

• At least 51 people were killed yesterday when a bus veered off a highway bridge in Guatemala City, reports Reuters. (See also New York Times.)

Regional

• Trump’s foreign aid freeze will have an immediate silencing effect on critical journalism around the world: A USAid factsheet showed that in 2023 the US agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets and supported 279 civil-society organizations dedicated to strengthening independent media in more than 30 countries. Investigative reporting in Colombia, Panama and Cuba are among those feeling impacts, reports the Guardian.

Regional Relations

• The Trump administration’s high-pressure diplomacy towards Latin America come up against geopolitical and economic limits, argues Bernabé Malacalza in El Diplo.

Honduras

• Anti-corruption advocates in Honduras have raised concerns about the threat of illicit campaign financing ahead of elections in November of this year, as organized crime groups continue to exploit loopholes in existing laws to influence the electoral process, reports InSight Crime.

Argentina

• Argentine President Javier Milei fired Argentina’s ambassador to the OAS, Sonia Cavallo, days after her father, a famous economist the president used to admire, criticized the government’s currency policy. (Bloomberg, Buenos Aires Herald)

• Milei has tamed inflation, but it persists at lower levels, and because he has not followed through on a promise to dollarize, the result is that Argentina is, in dollar terms, the most expensive country in the region, reports El País.

• Milei’s government will supposedly withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council because the body has not condemned Hamas as a “terrorist” organization. “This move would reflect a policy of alignment with Washington, which is similarly choosing not to seek re-election for its mandate in 2026, when its term also ends,” reports the Buenos Aires Times.

• Argentines support Milei’s quest to negotiate a free trade agreement with the US, but are split over competing with U.S. firms and are very worried about Trump’s looming tariffs. reports Bloomberg.

• Trump’s decision to slap 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports has put producers in Argentina on red alert, reports the Buenos Aires Times.