Venezuela warns its citizens that they could be subjected to ‘human rights violations’ in the US

Venezuela issued a statement on Monday night warning its citizens of the risks they may face if they travel to the United States. “We have observed an increase in arbitrary immigration control measures and harassment policies against Venezuelans. Cases of arbitrary detentions, unjustified deportations, confiscation of property and documents, as well as discriminatory treatment by U.S. authorities have been documented,” the statement reads.

The government of Nicolás Maduro is also alluding to the 250 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan-born criminal group, whom Washington has sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. “These actions include incarceration without due process in third countries, clearly violating human rights,” the government says. The harsh decisions taken by the Donald Trump administration against Venezuelan immigrants in the United States have become, as expected, grist for the mill of the Chavista regime’s narrative.

The White House’s announcement invoking the Alien Enemies Act leaves the Venezuelan community in the U.S. at the mercy of any official who decides to accuse someone of being part of the Tren de Aragua criminal network. Consequently, there has been astonishment and nationalist outrage in Venezuela. And while for many Venezuelans on social media Trump and Nayib Bukele’s action against the alleged members of this criminal organization is fair, and they applaud that the United States is directly linking them to the Chavista revolutionary high command, many people in the country are offended by what is happening. Some are even irritated by the positions of opposition leader María Corina Machado, whom they accuse of being partly responsible for this reality by overstepping her bounds in her demands for international sanctions against Venezuela.

In the midst of this debate, Chavista leaders are trying to exploit the situation with cunning, closing ranks around the migrants, seeking to regain ground among the population. According to the official narrative, Venezuelan migration to the United States — a fact of national life since 1998 — has not been due to people fleeing rampant crime, the collapse of public services, political unrest, expropriations, hyperinflation, and medicine shortages, but rather to “the effects of the economic blockade imposed by the United States at the request of Venezuela’s far right.”

Jorge Rodríguez, leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and head of the National Assembly, has issued statements on behalf of Maduro’s government, in which he criticizes Washington’s decision to send 200 Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua to the notorious Anti-Terrorism Confinement Center, created by Bukele in El Salvador.

“The United States government signed a proclamation that will go down in the pages of international diplomacy as a display of infamy, an atrocity that can only be compared to the racial laws of Nazi Germany,” Rodríguez said. “Our compatriots are being held hostage. We will resort to all legal and judicial strategies; we will even speak to the devil if we need to to ensure their return to their homes, with respect for their human rights.”

The Chavista politician continued: “We are considering presenting a proposal to President Nicolás Maduro to issue a request that no Venezuelan travel to the United States,” Rodríguez continued at a press conference. He then, rather coolly, proclaimed: “In that country (the United States), there is no rule of law for our emigrants. Venezuela is a decent, democratic country under the rule of law and justice.”

Rodríguez then also sought to link Machado to this new reality decreed by the United States government against Venezuelan immigration. “There you have it, Machado, what they’re doing to citizens who were born in the same territory where you were born. Kidnapped in El Salvador, subjected to forced labor.”

The leader promised popular mobilizations in defense of these people, and of all Venezuelan migrants who are victims of xenophobia, and promised a massive signature drive to raise a voice of protest against the harassment of Venezuelan migrants abroad.

The Tren de Aragua is a criminal organization that emerged from the depths of a few unions controlled by criminals who were working on the construction of the still-unfinished Caracas-Puerto Cabello railway around 2006. The announced National Railway Plan, seriously undermined by corruption, was one of Chavismo’s flagship projects during its electoral campaigns at the time.

For at least a decade and a half, the Tren de Aragua grew from Tocorón Prison into a stealthy and brutal criminal network that spread its tentacles to many parts of the country. They controlled the prison at will, operating their criminal schemes from jail, and organizing parties, setting up nightclubs and even a restaurant for inmates and their families, called La Sazón del Hampa. The organization gained enormous strength during the years when the governor of this state, located an hour from Caracas, was Tarek El Aissami, Minister of the Interior and Justice for five years under former president Hugo Chávez, and currently serving a prison sentence for corruption at Petróleos de Venezuela.

When the economic collapse became systemic around 2015, and the torrent of migration abroad became a reality among citizens, some of these mega-gangs embedded in Venezuela's prisons, towns, and cities began to migrate abroad in search of new horizons. In transit zones, these criminals were able to recruit many destitute people fleeing the Venezuelan disaster.

At that time, the Chavista government, in an apparent act of rupture, finally took military control of the prisons and unusually toughened its policies against the underworld, eliminating other local leaders who did not emigrate, such as Carlos Capa, El Coqui, El Conejo or El Wilexis.

The consolidation of measures preventing Venezuelans from entering the United States would have serious consequences for life in the country and could harm the opposition. Venezuela’s ties with U.S. cities like Miami, routinely ridiculed by the Chavista rhetoric, are already deeply rooted and affect all social strata of the population, including some sectors of the ruling party. There are also significant Venezuelan communities in cities like Tampa, Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver.

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