Two Venezuelans walk in front of their country's colors. Photo: Getty Images.
Misión Verdad – Feb 4, 2025
The meeting between President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suggests a considerable change in the relationship, at least circumstantially, between the governments of the two countries.
At the very least, this can be deduced from the recent statements of Elliott Abrams, who was the former special envoy of the Republicans for Venezuela during the first Trump presidency. Abrams, a hawk of the old guard of the US establishment who played a stellar role in the failed actions of “regime” change against Venezuela, alongside John Bolton, described Grenell’s visit to Caracas as a “terrible moment,” considering it unnecessary.
In Abrams’ opinion, Trump could have pressured Maduro with public statements to receive deportees and not make an “implicit recognition” of the Venezuelan president.
In effect, during the Biden administration, the Venezuelan government also received deportees from the United States, and no declaration or special meeting between officials of both states was necessary. Simply put, and despite the absence of diplomatic relations, long-standing migration agreements were respected.
However, Grenell’s visit suggests much more than a simple migration agreement, as it implied tacit recognition of Maduro and his government and created an effective channel of dialogue between Caracas and Washington, a step forward that is symptomatic and reflects, at least until now, the Oval Office’s willingness to approach Venezuela in a pragmatic and transactional manner that is typical of Trump.
From this meeting, elements have begun to unfold that deserve special interest.
“Notable improvements in Venezuela,” according to Washington
The Trump administration published a memorandum that makes official the revocation of the Temporary Protection Statute (TPS) issued in 2023, a law that permitted some 350,000 Venezuelans arriving in the US in that year to remain there without deportation.
The protection for these beneficiaries will expire next April, and they could be subject to the new expulsion and repatriation measures.
It is very likely that Trump’s decisions will also affect the 2024 beneficiaries of the TPS, which include another 250,000 Venezuelans.
Notification of the end of the TPS for 2023 was released by the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, after carrying out a review of the “conditions of the country” that concluded that designating TPS for Venezuelans is “contrary” to the “national interest of the United States.”
The document stated that, although some “conditions” in the Caribbean nation remained similar to the year 2023, “there are notable improvements in several areas, such as the economy, public health, and criminality.” This conclusion undermines the framework of justification necessary for the “protection” of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are on US soil.
TPS had been used as a resource to manage migration from Venezuela, but it was also used as a narrative mechanism to criminalize the country by posing a false situation of “direct threat” to emigrants.
With this action, the US government has formally overturned the thesis that Venezuela is a “threat” that compromises the integrity of its citizens and thus breaks a trend that, paradoxically, took shape during the first Trump administration.
This decision must be framed in the context of a diametric change in management of immigration that Trump is implementing. The Republican ruler does not want to treat Venezuelans as other tenants of the White House have done, for example, with Salvadorans, who have been beneficiaries of TPS for 20 years due to conditions that, today, have already disappeared, such as the war and post-civil war.
Regardless of whether this is part of a new immigration policy by the Republicans, it implies by default a change in the style of treatment that the US Executive Branch applies to the Caribbean country and its “situation.”
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“The Venezuela crisis has stabilized”
During the visit of the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Panama, significant statements were made by Panama’s President José Mulino.
Mulino alleged that migration through the Darien Gap was reduced by 94% in the last month, and pointed out that the Venezuelan crisis “has stabilized.”
He said that only an unexpected event, which he hopes “does not happen,” could increase immigration figures from Venezuela.
This is a very important point considering that Panama is a geographic enclave of the Venezuelan immigration process and that José Mulino has been one of the actors in the region with the most active participation in the recognition of the fake presidency of Edmundo González.
At the beginning of the year, the Panamanian government made a commitment to safeguard a batch of supposed electoral “records” that were in the hands of the extremist sector of the Venezuelan opposition.
However, the new declarations of the Panamanian president, in accordance with the signals emanating from the White House, weaken the international disposition to treat Venezuelan affairs with a character of supposed urgency, based on the story of a great commotion that will occur in the short term.
The Venezuelan opposition is further weakened
In an interview that she conducted with a group of like-minded journalists last Monday, María Corina Machado disclosed that she “knew” in advance that Grenell was going to visit Venezuela.
She also indicated that she met with the official. She claimed that she was “informed” by him of the agreements with Maduro.
That same Monday, Grenell was interviewed at length by an online TV service and explained in great detail his trip to Venezuela, mentioning everything from the atmosphere of the meeting with President Maduro to the moment of the release of six Americans detained in the country.
He noted that he spent hours waiting on a runway in Maiquetía for the arrival of his released compatriots, with whom he would travel to the United States, providing explicit details of his agenda in the country.
But neither Grenell nor the US government have made any mention of a meeting with Machado. Thus far, no photographic or video record of the meeting has emerged.
The fact that it is Machado who mentioned the supposed meeting is illustrative of several elements.
The first is that, if that meeting really took place, the US government does not seem interested in mentioning it or reporting it to raise Machado’s public profile.
The second element is more than suggestive. Machado has repeatedly told the “international community” that she is in hiding, so if she met with Grenell this would have happened with the full consent of the Venezuelan government, which would imply that the location of the self-proclaimed opposition leader is known because it is impossible that, due to the importance of the US official, the Venezuelan government would have lost track of her during her stay in the country.
There are definitely very ambiguous elements in Machado’s statements. She seems interested in projecting an image of herself as a relevant figure to Trump, or she could simply be lying to her followers and allied governments, as she has done on other occasions.
It is not a minor fact that various media outlets such as the EFE agency announced that Edmundo González left Peru for Panama City, coinciding with Marco Rubio’s visit to the Central American nation, with whom they suggested a possible meeting.
However, Rubio’s agenda in that country did not record any public or private meeting between the official and the former Venezuelan candidate.
Most likely this did not take place and, if it did, it was not entered into the public record, which would be very counterproductive to the agenda of the radical Venezuelan opposition, since it denotes a clear distancing from the current US government.
Surely the governments of the region and others of the Western world—which have established positions in favor of this sector of anti-Chavistas—are taking note of the signals that the Trump administration is sending, and this will translate into diminished support, purely symbolic, for Machado and González.
It is likely that these events can translate into a de-escalation of the intended isolation of Caracas and, if the White House maintains the channel of dialogue with Caracas, in the medium-term, the strength of the extreme-right opposition will continue to wane.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
