Caracas, Feb 24 (EFE).- A group of 242 Venezuelan migrants, including women and children, returned to their country on a plane from Mexico, the Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, announced on Monday.
“Women, a group of men, children, and adolescents are coming for the first time,” Cabello said in a broadcast state-run television station, Venezuelan Television Corporation (VTV).
According to the state broadcaster, the nationals were “deported from the United States.”
Venezuelan interior minister thanked the government of Claudia Sheinbaum.
“It is thanks to the direct relationship we have with the Mexican government that we have managed to get the Conviasa plane to go, and we will certainly make other trips to continue bringing back the Venezuelans,” he added.
Cabello explained that among the group of 74 children and adolescents, there is a 16-year-old girl who “comes alone,” as well as others under the age of 18 who “have no identification because they were born there and are not ed.”
The official said the returnees would be subject to medical and identification protocols, while the adults would have their criminal records checked.
“We are doing this with the necessary rigor because the initial information was that criminals of all kinds were coming from the US, but when we got here, we realized that the reality is different,” said Cabello.
On Monday, Cabello told the Cable a Tierra radio program, also broadcast by VTV, that the deportees would be taken “to their own homes” and that he expected them to be taken to court only in the cases that it was necessary.
This third group of migrants is returning to the country after Caracas agreed to receive deportees from the US at the end of January, when Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special envoy, met in the Venezuelan capital with Nicolás Maduro, who was sworn in for a third six-year term in January after his controversial re-election in 2024.
On Feb. 20, a group of 176 Venezuelans returned by plane from Honduras after arriving at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, where they had been detained. On Feb. 10, 190 deportees reached the country on two flights.
The Maduro government said that none of the migrants on these flights were part of the Tren de Aragua criminal group. EFE
rbc/dgp
