President Maduro Brings 2-Year-Old Maikelys Back to Venezuela (+El Salvador)

Immense relief has come to the Venezuelan people following the return of the two-year-old Maikelys Espinoza to Venezuela, who was brought home to her mother on a plane as part of the Plan Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland) program. The US empire handed her over after intense negotiations with the Venezuelan government led by President Nicolás Maduro, who thanked US President Donald Trump and his Special Envoy Richard Grenell for their eventual cooperation.

The two-year-old baby girl—separated from her mother Yorely Bernal by US colonial authorities a few weeks ago—returned to Venezuela this Wednesday, May 14, on a flight with 226 repatriated migrants, including seven other children, 37 women, and 182 men.

After Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and First Lady Cilia Flores received the toddler at the Simón Bolívar International Airport and made brief official statements, they proceeded to the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. There, President Nicolás Maduro, alongside Yorely Bernal and Raida Inciarte, the girl’s mother and grandmother, awaited them anxiously.

The moment of the child’s arrival and her reunion with her family will never be forgotten.

“Here is everyone’s beloved daughter,” President Maduro said upon receiving her. “She is the daughter and granddaughter of all of us.”

It must also be remembered that the girl’s father, Maiker Espinoza, remains incarcerated at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, where he was illegally transferred and is accused—without evidence—of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

After Maikelys was reunited with her mother and grandmother, President Maduro thanked Jorge Rodríguez for “all the efforts he has made as Venezuela’s special peace envoy. We were working until 1:00 a.m., alongside the team of Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Diosdado—who always looks after the migrants—Cilia, and, well, [we were] attentive to every detail.”

“I want to thank the lawyers and civil and migrant movements in the United States who worked in coordination with the Venezuelan movements,” he added, “with Larry Devoe, with Maikelys’s mother, with her grandmother.”

“Thank God, first of all, for bringing this beautiful girl into her mother’s arms,” the Venezuelan head of state continued. “We must rightly thank Donald Trump’s ambassador, Richard Grenell, and with him, we must also thank President Donald Trump, who is in the Arab countries, for managing to cooperate for this act of justice.”

President Maduro at May Day March: We Will Rescue Maikelys and 252 Kidnapped in El Salvador

“There have been and will continue to be differences, but it is possible, with God’s blessing, to move forward and resolve many issues,” President Maduro emphasized. “I hope and believe that we will soon be able to rescue Maikelys’s father and the 253 Venezuelans who are in El Salvador.” He urged Venezuelans to continue mobilizing, and also thanked Camila Fabri de Saab for her support to Maikelys’s family.

Photo gallery, courtesy of Presidential Press