Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro claimed on Monday evening that his regime “will not rest” until it rescues the Venezuelan migrants “kidnapped” by El Salvador and placed in a “concentration camp” by President Nayib Bukele.
“We will not rest until the Venezuelans who have been kidnapped and sent to jail in El Salvador, violated and subjected without due process or the right to defense, return to their homeland,” Maduro said during the latest broadcast of his weekly show With Maduro Plus.
Following President Donald Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act over the weekend, the United States deported a group of 238 Venezuelans suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization to El Salvador on Sunday per the terms of an agreement with President Bukele.
The Maduro regime initially protested the deportation in a Foreign Ministry statement in which it accused the United States of violating human rights through the “anachronistic law” and compared the deportation of the Venezuelan migrants to “slavery” and “Nazi concentration camps.”
“That’s how the proclamation signed last Saturday, March 14, is. Well, it is a totally anachronistic, illegal expression of aggression against the Venezuelan nationality,” Maduro claimed. “To qualify Venezuelan migrants as criminals, terrorists, and murderers. It’s the act of greatest enmity, of greatest injustice ever committed by the United States of America against the people of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
“If the United States has any Venezuelan under trial and punishment, the dialogue is activated, and according to our law we act. What is being done is fascism,” he continued. “Venezuela is ready to denounce this massive violation of human rights against hard-working and noble migrants in the United States.”
During his weekly show on state television , Maduro accused President Bukele of “humiliating” the Venezuelan deportees and “respectfully” asked him if he endorses the creation of “concentration camps” to put “good people” in prison without trial.
Maduro also criticized the treatment of the suspected Tren de Aragua members upon arriving in El Salvador, asserting that someone cannot be “captured and condemned, put in airplanes and sent to concentration camps in El Salvador” for being Venezuelan.
“They were handcuffed by the hands and legs, without telling them where they were going and when they arrived in El Salvador they were beaten with clubs, humiliated, thrown to the ground, had their hair cut off and heads shaved. That’s called justice? That’s called international law? That’s called human rights? What do you call that? That is called fascism, Nazism,” Maduro said. “And Venezuela is ready and willing to denounce this massive violation of human rights against migrants, workers, and nobles in the United States.”
The accusations espoused by the Venezuelan socialist dictator on Monday came hours after Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan National Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator, claimed to reporters at a press conference that day that the socialist regime “will not rest” until it “rescues those kidnapped in El Salvador.”
“We are going to send all planes to any part of the world to look for our Venezuelan sisters and brothers,” Rodríguez said. “We are going to retrieve them, we are going to rescue them, we are not going to rest, just as we managed to recover the Venezuelans kidnapped in Guantanamo, we are going to recover the Venezuelans kidnapped in El Salvador.”
“The supposed American-dream-turned-Salvadoran-nightmare is not worth it, turned into atrocious action only comparable to Adolf Hitler’s racial segregation laws,” he claimed at another point of the conference.
Rodríguez availed himself of the opportunity to claim that Tren de Aragua “does not exist,” an assertion repeated by several members of the Venezuelan socialist regime throughout 2024 despite the extensive list of crimes committed by the terrorist organization throughout the United States and Latin American nations in recent years. The socialist official dismissed accusations that the migrants detained in El Salvador belong to Tren de Aragua because, according to him, the gang “simply does not exist.”
“There is absolutely no organized gang of the gangs that we dismantled, that identifies itself as the Tren de Aragua. They are doing it to kidnap Venezuelans,” Rodríguez said, further claiming — but without presenting any evidence — that criminal gangs that “previously operated” in Venezuela were financed with funds from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Venezuelan socialist regime further responded to the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador by issuing a “travel alert” on Monday to Venezuelans either planning to travel to the United States or residing there due to the “risks and conditions they could face in that territory.”
“In recent months, there has been an increase in arbitrary immigration control measures and harassment policies against Venezuelans. Cases of arbitrary detentions, deportations without cause, confiscation of property and documents,” the document says, “as well as discriminatory and humiliating treatment by U.S. authorities have been documented,” the document read. “These actions include imprisonment without due process and kidnappings in third country jails, in clear violation of human rights.”
“In addition, those residing in or transiting through the United States are advised to exercise extreme caution due to the increase in violent incidents and the implementation of regulations that restrict fundamental rights, which could compromise their safety and well-being,” the document continued.
The U.S. Department of State maintains a similar travel advisory urging U.S. nationals not to travel to Venezuela due to the high risk of wrongful detention, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure. Other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom maintain similar travel advisories regarding Venezuela, urging their respective nationals to avoid all travel to the South American nation.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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