Migrants board a plane bound to southern Mexico as part of a repatriation flight to their countries, at the Piedras Negras International Airport, in Piedras Negras, Coahuila state, Mexico, December 23, 2023. Photo: Reuters/José Luis González.
Venezuelan authorities repatriated 190 Venezuelan migrants from the United States in two Conviasa planes, the Venezuelan state airline that has been sanctioned, attacked and persecuted by the US. The Venezuelans arrived on Monday, February 10, on the first repatriation flight between the two countries after the January 31 meeting between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Richard Grenell, special envoy of Donald Trump, in Caracas.
“The Conviasa plane has just landed, bringing in a loving, safe, appropriate, and dignified manner this first group returning to Venezuela and resuming the Vuelta a la Patria program, the program to reunify the Venezuelan family, the new stage of construction of peace and prosperity,” announced President Nicolás Maduro on Monday on his TV program Con Maduro+.
The first of the two flights landed at 9:03 p.m. at the Simón Bolívar Maiquetía International Airport, in La Guaira state, followed by the second flight about 20 minutes later. Each one arrived with 95 Venezuelans, all men.
“They are coming to their homeland, and this must be repeated, the Return to the Homeland plan,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello reported from the airport, where he went to personally welcome the returning migrants.
Venezuelan migrants after arriving from the US to Maduro’s “dictatorship” in Venezuela. What a suffering! 😜 https://t.co/mcbDyNXw0o
— Orinoco Tribune (@OrinocoTribune) February 11, 2025
He added that the flights from the US were suspended due to actions of the Biden administration. “Now in an open, direct dialogue between our government and the United States government, the first Venezuelans are arriving here to their homeland,” Cabello commented in an audiovisual contact with President Maduro on the television program. “They will be received as Venezuelans, Venezuelans who for some reason had to leave the country, but who are returning.”
The arrival of the Venezuelan repatriates was the most reported news on Monday, even by the large transnational media monopolies, which for years joined the campaigns of Venezuelan extreme right, first promoting mass migration and then exacerbating xenophobia against Venezuelan migrants.
The operation to bring back the Venezuelan migrants began at 3:00 a.m. on Monday, when the two Conviasa aircraft left for the US. The time was announced by Cabello, who in the broadcast highlighted the professionalism of the workers of the state airline. “Let it be known how this was done, in addition to each one fulfilling their word, because when the word is fulfilled, a level of trust is generated,” he said. “Our pilots, our teams have been flying from three in the morning until now without rest. Each plane carried two crews. That speaks volumes about the responsibility, quality, professionalism of our Conviasa workers.”
“The US tried to finish off Conviasa, yet here it is, strong,” said President Maduro, congratulating the pilots, workers, operators, technicians and the administration of the Venezuelan flag carrier carrying out the repatriation program.
“In the darkness you see light, and it is the light of the homeland, it is the light of Conviasa,” he said. “This is the world we want, a world of peace, understanding, dialogue, cooperation. We are warriors, yes, warriors of peace, of life, of hope.”
Humane treatment of repatriates guaranteed
Minister Diosdado Cabello, accompanied by a multidisciplinary team, stated that the instruction given by President Maduro is to ensure that the repatriates be provided “immediate medical review, and to check the conditions of each person arriving on the flights.”
He described that the returnees first went to immigration, “and from there they will go to a medical check-up, personal check-up, the review of those cases in which there is a criminal record—and it is our responsibility to ensure that this process goes as it should, in a perfect way.”
Cabello added that the International Red Cross, Venezuelan Civil Protection, and other organizations and institutions participated in the operation. He also highlighted the presence of the media covering the event.
Minutes later, while the images of the planes landing in Venezuela and the repatriated people descending from the aircraft were broadcast, President Maduro stated, “It is a tremendous effort that we have made, investing resources to bring back our brothers.” He referred to the manipulation that the global right created before, during and after the presidential election of July 28, on Venezuelan migration. “How many lies on the networks, how many people did they ask to ‘make a little video on Tiktok’. How many Bolívar-Chávez Unit leaders did they call, their child over there, saying, ‘I am in Texas; if you do this…. that!’ It was emotional blackmail, a dirty campaign, because the real truth, the one that guarantees the return of all migrants is the Bolivarian Revolution, we are the ones who guarantee peace, stability and recovery.”
“They are returning to a country at peace, in a clear situation of reconstruction, recovery and improvement,” he added. “They are returning to a free country where no one is going to discriminate against them or harm them. Mothers and grandmothers, who are the ones who have cried and suffered the most, know that we are the guarantee of the loving reunification of the Venezuelan family.”
Cabello added, “The Venezuelan government has spared no effort to ensure that Venezuelans return to their homeland. God willing, this process will continue,” and emphasized that migrants should never have left their homeland.
Venezuela’s Interior Minister: Far-Right Opposition Leads Network of Coyotes Taking Migrants to US
Repatriates sang the national anthem
Cabello, who boarded the planes to welcome the repatriated, mentioned that the first thing the compatriots did on their return was to sing the National Anthem, “in a show of feeling already in their country, in their homeland, and they sang it with the feeling of someone who was far away and returned.”
“I have told them that all this effort has to do with them returning to their country to work, to build this homeland,” he told President Maduro during the broadcast. “What we saw there inside is very emotional. Their faces, their tears, showing their deep emotion of returning to their country. Never in Venezuela will they be treated badly, their human rights will be respected. They will go back to their communities and will take up their daily work.”
Very few with criminal records
“That they all have criminal records is a lie; in reality, very few have criminal records,” Minister Cabello said in statements to the media, discarding the US claims that Venezuelan criminals are being deported.
When asked what the repatriated people said upon arrival, Cabello replied, “That they love Venezuela, that they are happy and are going to eat arepa.”
He specified that those who have returned are between 20 and 30 years old.
913,000 Venezuelans have returned with Vuelta a la Patria
Since 2018, when the Venezuelan government launched the Vuelta a la Patria Plan, to date, more than 913,000 Venezuelans have returned through this program, Cabello reported. “The Return to the Homeland plan must return all migrants who need support,” commented President Maduro, adding that the return of these 190 compatriots from the United States was possible thanks to Venezuela’s peace diplomacy.
He reiterated that Venezuela wants to “build relations communication, respect, understanding” with the United States. He called on those who are returning, and those who are eager to return, to join in the recovery of Venezuela. He highlighted the efforts of his government to return migrants from various nations. He also mentioned the obstacles that some right-wing governments have placed before this task. “They tried to hijack a plane in Chile. They stole a plane from us, [Argentinian President] Javier Milei did it, a plan that provided humanitarian assistance in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Dismantling the gang of coyotes
President Maduro emphasized the need to dismantle the criminal organizations of human trafficking, known as coyotes, gangs that are led by leaders of the Venezuelan right, who turned forced migration into a business. “That fascist right spoke of 8 million migrants, which means that Venezuela was almost empty,” he said, adding that the fascist sector had created “a business—for each migrant they asked for money from the USAID, they got rich as coyotes and they got rich with so-called humanitarian aid. What I am saying is completely true and I have been condemning it since 2017, eight years ago. It was a big business and it continues to be a big business for the coyotes, the mafias.”
“All these mafias must be dismantled, we have to go to a level of cooperation, of intelligence, level of police cooperation, at the highest level, with the United States,” he continued. “This is what I put forward to Richard Grenell, representative and envoy of President Trump, and this is what we are going to propose to all governments from Mexico to Colombia, to dismantle the human trafficking gangs, criminals, mobsters, at all levels.”
For more than two years, President Maduro has been complaining that the wanted criminals Leopoldo López, Juan Guaidó, David Smolansky, Carlos Vecchio, Miguel Pizarro, Carlos Paparoni run a network of coyotes that promote the migration of Venezuelans to the US. Since November 2023, there have been no flights from the US with repatriates. The first arrived on October 18, 2023 with 126 people, and the second one five days later with 111 compatriots.
(Diario VEA) by Yuleidys Hernández Toledo
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SC
