Venezuela will resume accepting U.S. deportation flights on Friday — days after socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro suspended the flights in response to President Donald Trump cancelling a Biden-era oil license granted to Chevron to operate in the country.
According to the Maduro regime, the flights will resume after it “reached an agreement” with President Trump’s Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell.
“I am pleased to announce that Venezuela has agreed to resume flights to pick up their citizens who broke U.S. Immigration Laws and entered the U.S. illegally,” Grenell announced on Thursday through social media. “The flights will resume Friday.”
Venezuela had initially accepted U.S. deportation flights of illegal Venezuelan migrants and members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization after Grenell traveled to Caracas and met with Maduro in late January. Grenell’s visit also led to the release of a group of six unjustly detained Americans, arrested by Venezuelan authorities for their alleged involvement in dubious and unproven plots to assassinate Maduro and “attack” Venezuelan state infrastructure.
Last week, Maduro announced that Venezuela would stop receiving U.S. deportation flights after President Trump terminated a license granted by former President Joe Biden to California-based Chevron in November 2022. The license, which is set to expire on Thursday, April 3, 2025, at 12:01 a.m., allowed Chevron to resume oil production in Venezuela and sell Venezuelan oil in American markets.
The license allowed Chevron to operate in Venezuela despite the still-active oil sanctions imposed by President Trump during his first term in January 2019. President Trump sanctioned the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in 2019 in response to the extensive list of human rights violations committed by the Maduro regime against its own people.
Maduro claimed last week that the termination of the Chevron license had “affected” the U.S. deportation flights of migrants. Several members of his top brass such as Venezuelan Vice President and Oil Minister Delcy Rodríguez claimed that the end of the license sought to “harm the Venezuelan people,” asserting that it would instead “hurt” the United States.
“We have a little problem there, because with what they did they have damaged the communications we had opened, right? And I was interested in the communications we had opened because I wanted to bring all the Venezuelans who are imprisoned and persecuted there unjustly, just for being a migrant,” Maduro said last week.
Days after the suspension, the Maduro regime announced that it would resume accepting U.S. deportation flights after “reaching an agreement” with Grenell. At press time, neither officials from the United States government nor authorities of the Maduro regime have publicly disclosed further information.
Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan National Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator, announced on Thursday that an agreement had been reached with Grenell within the “framework” of the “Return to the Homeland” plan to “repatriate Venezuelan brothers and sisters who are in the United States.”
Return to the Homeland is a program originally launched by Maduro in 2018 for Venezuelan migrants wishing to voluntarily return to Venezuela after fleeing from the socialist regime.
“The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela thus protects the Human Rights of our migrant compatriots and defends and safeguards the reunification of the families that have been victims of the serious consequences that the criminal sanctions against our country and our economy produced in our people and that provoked the departure of our compatriots, hard-working and dignified people, to other destinations in search of alternatives,” Rodríguez’s message read.
“We ratify that we will take care of our compatriots wherever they may be and we congratulate ourselves for the happiness that comes to Venezuelan homes when we see their sons and daughters return to their homes, to their homeland, to a dignified future that we will build together,” the message concluded.
Prior to the suspension of the flights, three such U.S. deportation flights of Venezuelan illegal migrants had reportedly taken place as of February 24, with a group of 242 Venezuelan migrants, including women and children, arriving in Caracas from Mexico on that day. According to VTV, the Maduro regime’s main state propaganda outlet, Venezuelan authorities “activated” a “comprehensive medical checkup and police check, interview, and review of judicial records” for the arrival of the migrants.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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