Weaponizing Migrants: A New Phase in the US Hybrid War Against Venezuela

By Dalal al-Zainabi and Saheli Chowdhury  –  Mar 26, 2025

For more than a decade, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been the victim of a hybrid war conducted by the US empire. What began as a campaign of economic and diplomatic isolation through unilateral coercive measures, launched with Obama’s 2015 Executive Order declaring the country an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security, has been adding to its arsenal more insidious tactics, one of the worst being the weaponization of Venezuelan forced migration. This strategy, which exploits human lives for political ends, constitutes a dangerous escalation in Washington’s hybrid war against Caracas. The Trump regime’s deportation of migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador can be considered as the second phase of Washington’s anti-Venezuela war on the migration front.

Phase one: Encouraging mass migration
The first phase of this migration-focused assault began under the Trump administration in 2019, but was carried on with greater intensity under the Biden administration. During its initial years, the Lima Group—a now-defunct coalition of far-right Latin American governments aligned with Washington—actively encouraged Venezuelans to flee their homeland. Lima Group presidents such as the late Sebastián Piñera of Chile, Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador, Iván Duque of Colombia or Mauricio Macri of Argentina issued official statements “welcoming” Venezuelans and even incited them to go to those countries without documents. This open incitement by right-wing governments coincided with the escalation of the West’s economic war against Venezuela, conducted through the imposition of a total economic-financial-trade blockade starting from February 2019.

This approach served multiple purposes. For one, it created a narrative that reinforced anti-Venezuela propaganda, portraying the Bolivarian Republic as a failed state incapable of protecting its citizens. More importantly, it fueled internal destabilization by encouraging tens of thousands to leave behind families, jobs, and communities. This mass exodus weakened Venezuela’s social fabric and workforce, deteriorating the public and production sectors and compounding the hardships caused by crippling unilateral coercive measures—euphemistically called “sanctions”—imposed by the US, the EU, and their “allies” around the world.

The migrant strategy took a new format during the Biden administration. Migrant trafficking networks, or coyotes, facilitated illegal crossings into the United States, convincing Venezuelan migrants, especially those who had already been living outside the country for the past years, that the Democrat administration was more welcoming of immigrants. Once on US soil, these migrants were instructed to surrender to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, claiming they were victims of the “Maduro regime” or that they were fleeing crime in Venezuela, under the “credible threat” argument.

However, there was another layer to this strategy: once inside the US, many undocumented Venezuelans lived openly, seemingly unbothered by immigration authorities.Those who were not deported by ICE were tracked and documented, staying only by the “good graces” of the Biden regime. The growing numbers of Venezuelan migrants who are completely vulnerable to repression and deportation, with no legal recourse, became something of a ticking time bomb, ready for exploitation by the empire whenever and in whatever manner necessary.

Since 2020-2021, many of those Venezuelan migrants residing in Latin American countries, due to economic hardship, tightening migration policies and state violence mixed with xenophobia, opted to move to the North, especially the United States and Spain. This might not have been in the calculations of those in Washington initially promoting this migration.

Alongside this the new migratory wave, the US began the narrative of criminalization around 2022-2023. Venezuelan right-wing regime change supporters who were already settled in the US contributed to this narrative, launching smearing campaigns mixed with classism and racism, against the new Venezuelan migrants coming from working class backgrounds.

Phase two: Hostage diplomacy and psychological warfare
Fast forward to today, and we see the emergence of what can only be described as “hostage diplomacy.” Under President Donald Trump’s renewed crackdown on immigration—one of his main campaign promises, thousands of Venezuelan migrants have been rounded up and are being deported—not back to Venezuela, but to infamous maximum-security prisons in Guantánamo Bay (Cuban territory occupied by the US) and even El Salvador. These deportations are not random; they are calculated moves within the context of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the Venezuelan government.

Why send migrants to distant locations rather than directly repatriating them? The US authorities would cite the sanctions (unilateral coercive measures) against the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, in charge of the migrant repatriation flights of the Venezuelan government program Return to the Homeland, and the lack of formal bilateral diplomatic relations, as the reasons. Both sides have also pinned the blame on the other regarding the bumps in the repatriation process. However, the reality is more sinister. Firstly, the US government knows full well that Venezuela will not abandon its citizens. Through diplomatic channels, the Nicolás Maduro administration has already negotiated the return of more than 900 migrants from the United States this year, including 177 individuals detained at Guantánamo Bay. But such negotiations come at a cost. Each repatriation effort requires painstaking back-channel diplomacy, often involving agreements with third countries like Mexico, Honduras, or Colombia. This process forces Venezuela to expend valuable resources that would otherwise have been utilized for domestic priorities.

Another factor in this phase is the criminalization of Venezuelan migrants, branding all of them, without evidence, as members of the now defunct Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, and transferring them to infamous prisons for being “terrorists.” The “legal” basis for this illegal action is the inclusion of the aforementioned gang in the Trump administration’s list of “foreign terrorist organizations,” and this is reinforced by the mainstream media campaign of exaggerating the power of Tren de Aragua to the extent of equating it with brutal, regimented, heavily armed narco-trafficking gangs with territorial control like the Mexican Cartel de Sinaloa or the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13). In addition, the US authorities attempt to connect the Venezuelan government with the gang, with fantasy narratives that the Maduro administration is dispatching Tren de Aragua members to the United States to destabilize the country, thus invoking the national security threat.

The facts on the ground, however, point to the contrary, as Venezuelan security and intelligence agencies have been conducting multiple operations to root out all gang and paramilitary presence from the national territory since 2019, and have reportedly broken up the Tren de Aragua into pieces, leaving it without a head or a cohesive organizational structure. Nevertheless, the joint US state-media propaganda intends to create a very different image with the aim of manufacturing consent for a probable eventual “humanitarian invasion” of Venezuela.

Moreover, the public spectacle of the deportations serves as a tool of psychological warfare against Venezuelan migrants in particular and migration in general. By showcasing brutal treatment of migrants, the US aims to deter others from attempting the journey northward. It sends a chilling message to Venezuelans considering migration to the US: their fate may include indefinite detention, separation from loved ones, or even imprisonment in foreign prisons. This tactic seeks to instill fear in the heart of anyone contemplating emigrating to the United States and at the same time, in the case of Venezuela, to undermine morale of its population. Further, according to various analysts as well as Venezuelan government officials, this has a racist dimension, as the public humiliation of Venezuelans abroad is considered as a humiliation and insult to the Venezuelan identity and nationality itself.

Confronting Washington’s strategy to label Venezuelan migrants as gang members is not only needed to safeguard the basic rights of these migrants, but also to prevent an escalation of similar strategies against other migrant groups.

President Maduro Refutes Allegation that Venezuela Sent Criminals to the US, Compares It to False WMD Claims During Iraq War

“Regime change” remains the goal
Despite the shift in methods, the ultimate objective remains unchanged: “regime change” in Venezuela. Alongside Washington’s economic strangulation and disinformation campaigns, the current strategy against migrants leverages human suffering to achieve political goals. This is similar to how “Israel” publicly advertises its brutal torture and humiliation of Palestinian prisoners in an effort to extract concessions from the Palestinian resistance. With the abduction of migrants—for the illegal deportation of innocent people to prisons in Guantánamo and El Salvador can be called by no other name—the US is exploiting vulnerable people in order to force Venezuela’s hand. Whether it expects to gain territorial concessions, policy changes, or outright capitulation from Venezuela remains unclear—but the intent is undeniable.

It is noteworthy that both Democratic and Republican administrations have contributed to this cycle of exploitation. While Obama and Biden oversaw silent deportations, their administrations laid the groundwork by encouraging mass migration of Venezuelans as a weapon in the hybrid war. Trump, ever the showman, has amplified the cruelty, turning deportations into high-profile events meant to appease his base. Regardless of party affiliation, the underlying imperialism persists.

Only the Venezuelan government can rescue the migrants
Amid this chaos, one truth stands out: only the Venezuelan government possesses the tools to mitigate the crisis. Private organizations and individuals—despite their best intentions—lack the diplomatic clout necessary to negotiate repatriations or secure safe passage for stranded or detained migrants. So far, all the 919 Venezuelans repatriated from the US have returned home safely thanks to under-the-table negotiations conducted by the government of Venezuela, the same one that has been demonized worldwide as “authoritarian” and “ruthless.” Without these efforts, countless lives would remain in limbo.

This underscores why international solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is crucial. The economic war on Venezuela is the source of most of this migration in the first place. Sanctions and other punitive measures imposed by the US make direct movement of people between the two countries impossible, complicating repatriation efforts. Despite these obstacles, Venezuela continues to advocate for its people, demonstrating resilience in the face of adversity. Supporting Venezuelan migrants—many of whom are anti-chavistas—and the country’s authorities means opposing the broader imperialist framework that is destroying the lives of people worldwide.

Conclusion
The weaponization of Venezuelan migrants represents a new low in US foreign policy. It is a cynical ploy that treats human beings as bargaining chips, reducing complex issues to crude power plays and cheap shows. Venezuelans—wherever they may be—deserve better than to be caught in the crossfire of imperialist geopolitical games. Their plight reminds us that imperialism thrives on division and despair, and that unity and resistance remain our strongest weapons against it. Therefore, it is an imperative for anti-imperialists to stand with the Venezuelan government, its people, and all the peoples around the world fighting for dignity and self-determination against the inhuman genocidal machine of US imperialism.

 

 

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