Abduction of Children: a Weapon of US War Against Venezuelan Migrants

By Misión Verdad – Jul 2, 2025

On the night of June 30, the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, reported that 18 Venezuelan children are still in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the United States, even after their parents had been deported to Venezuela through repatriation flights agreed to between the governments of Venezuela and the US.

Venezuela insists that the retention of the children is a flagrant abduction and demands their immediate repatriation based on the international principle of family unity and the total absence of criminal charges against the minors. The United States justifies its actions with the already discredited claim of alleged association between the parents and the defunct Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

The identity of the 18 minors was disclosed by the Venezuelan deputy minister of International Communication, Camilla Fabri. Among the most vulnerable cases are Gloriannys Molina Machado, who is a year and four months old, and Alanna Sophia Ballesteros Herrera, one year old, whose ages indicate their absolute dependence on their parents for their physical and emotional well-being and development.

Similarly, three-year-old Cristian Shian Shian Hurtado Caricote, two-year-old Monserrat Sofía Guillén Cáceres, two-year-old Ethan Manuel Padilla Moyetones, three-year-old Alitz Irene Durand Uzcátegui, and four-year-old Aidan Isaac Acuña Marín remain abducted in the US. They are all in critical stages of early childhood, when family presence, stability, and affection are decisive.

Where are the children?
The first child case to expose the human cost of the US government’s immigration policy was Maikelys Espinoza, a two-year-old Venezuelan girl. In March, her father was transferred to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. A month later, her mother was deported to Venezuela without her daughter. Maikelys was held in an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Texas as an “unaccompanied alien child” with a foster family.

The US government’s authority to detain children in this way emanates from the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), which empower ORR to take custody of “unaccompanied minors” and find them a legal sponsor (a relative or guardian) before releasing them out of a shelter setting. Most of these centers operate under state and federal licenses that allow indefinite periods of detention if no sponsor appears.

According to an article by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune titled “An Agency Tasked With Protecting Immigrant Children Is Becoming an Enforcement Arm, Current and Former Staffers Say,” ORR has begun sharing its confidential databases with the Department of Homeland Security since January 2025 to facilitate deportations. Pursuant to an executive order, ICE agents gained “unfettered access” to sensitive information about minors and their sponsors and conducted 1,500 home visits in just two weeks in March 2025, based on those records. An internal mailer anticipated another 3,600 inspections in the Houston area.

The turnaround deepened with the appointment of ICE veteran Angie Salazar as acting director of ORR. Under her leadership, the agency’s institutional ombudsperson was fired, and new requirements for sponsors were imposed. Foreign passports or IDs without legal status are no longer accepted, proof of financial income is required, and the use of DNA testing to verify parentage was expanded and is now shared with ICE.

In addition, the US government repealed provisions of a 2024 rule that prohibited ORR from denying sponsorship based on the immigration status of the family member of the minor and the use of sponsor information for deportation purposes. These measures have prolonged the detention of minors by deterring families from claiming their children for fear of arrest or deportation.

Only after strong diplomatic and media pressure was Maykelis Espinoza returned to Caracas on May 14 on a repatriation flight and reunited with her family. The episode proved that Washington can repatriate minors when it chooses but prefers to hold them at its will to sustain its narrative.

To date, the Venezuelan government has received no official information on where the 18 children are, nor has it had access to their immigration records from the US government, which reinforces the allegation of abduction.

The US narrative
The attempt to justify these crimes against Venezuelan migrants is sustained by the narrative built around the designation of the Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the United States. With this exceptional stigma, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) applies a controversial “scoring” system that criminalizes everyday practices and cultural traits.

All it takes is a few points—a tattoo, an accent, or one’s place of origin—for a parent to be deported to foreign confinement centers, which are more akin to concentration camps, and for their children to be held in federal shelters. In March, 240 Venezuelans were sent to CECOT. Of them, more than 50 had entered the US legally, 75% had no criminal record, and none was formally charged or given a hearing.

Previous investigations published by Misión Verdad have revealed the arbitrary nature of this procedure, used as an alibi for the criminalization of the entire Venezuelan population. From the same narrative emerges the forced separation of families, and in practice, the abduction of Venezuelan children, turned into hostages of a policy of punishment.

Venezuela’s Interior Minister: “The United States is Stealing Venezuelan Children”

The US disrespects children’s rights
The forced separation of the 18 minors from their families directly violates Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which prohibits the removal of children from their parents except by judicial decision and with guarantees of reunification. Similarly, Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects family unity, and Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, which prohibits cruel or degrading treatment, have been violated. The United States, although it has not ratified the first of these treaties, has signed it and is obliged not to contravene it, while the other two agreements are fully in force domestically in the US.

At the US domestic level, the Flores Settlement states that custody of migrant children should be “as brief as possible,” while the TVPRA reinforces the obligation to release children to a sponsor “without undue delay” and prioritizing the best interests of the child. ProPublica’s report shows that, under the administration of Angie Salazar, the ORR is applying measures that have unjustifiably prolonged the detention of minors, in violation of its own laws.

In Venezuela, Article 78 of the Constitution and Articles 6 and 9 of the Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (LOPNNA) establish the principle of children’s integral protection and the right to family life, norms that prohibit arbitrary family separation and oblige the state to guarantee family unity and the best interests of the child.

Psychosocial harm is equally serious. Studies by the American Psychological Association indicate that prolonged separation causes symptoms of severe anxiety and attachment disorder in more than 70% of affected children. The ORR itself reported in 2024 that one out of every three retained children showed speech regression or prolonged insomnia.

Venezuela demands immediate and exemplary response
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro demanded “immediate and exemplary” measures from the UN and the IACHR, stressing that Washington “turned children into hostages of its political war” against Venezuela. During the television program Con Maduro+, the president also accused UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk of acting under the dictates of the US and European elites.

“For him, the 252 Venezuelans abducted in El Salvador, the abduction of 18 Venezuelan children in the United States, the persecution of thousands of migrants in the United States, do not exist,” said President Maduro. “Even worse, every day, he ignores the murder of children, men, and women in Palestine. He has an agenda contrary to human rights.”

He also assured the children’s families that “they have the support of the entire Venezuelan State that is fighting for the return of the children.” So far this year, Venezuela has achieved the dignified return of 6,752 nationals, including 979 children, from the US.

The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, received the Apostolic Nuncio Alberto Ortega Martín to deliver a letter addressed to Pope Leo XIV in which President Maduro, on behalf of the country, requested his mediation to rescue the children separated from their families.

The prolonged detention of these 18 children exposes the true face of US immigration policy: with the false narrative of terrorism, driven by geopolitical interests and without a shred of evidence, an entire country is being criminalized at the cost of violating basic rights.

By using children as a political bargaining chip, the US demonstrates once again that its practices belie its human rights rhetoric. Returning these minors to their families is not an act of generosity or congruence but an obligation that has already been fulfilled with Maikelys Espinoza and must be replicated immediately for the other children.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SL