Venezuela to Resume Deportation Flights From US

Venezuela sent two flights in February to bring 190 illegal immigrants back home.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) shakes hands with Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump's special envoy, at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 31, 2025. Venezuela's presidential press office via AP

Venezuela has agreed to resume flights to bring its citizens home from the United States beginning on March 14, according to U.S. senior diplomat and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell.

“I am pleased to announce that Venezuela has agreed to resume flights to pick up their citizens who broke U.S. Immigration Laws and entered the U.S. illegally,” Grenell announced March 13 on social media platform X.

“The flights will resume Friday.”

The announcement comes after a pause in the flights operated by Nicolas Maduro’s regime after he indicated that the scheduled flights were “affected” by Trump’s decision to cancel Chevron’s oil license to operate in the South American country.

Chevron, a U.S. multinational oil and gas company, was given its license on Nov. 26, 2022, by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control as part of the Biden administration’s larger sanction lift on Venezuela after Maduro held talks with his political opposition to hold a free and fair election.

However, sanctions resumed in April 2024 after Maduro refused to recognize his opponent, Edmundo González, as the rightful winner of the election.

Trump announced on Feb. 26 that Chevron’s license would be terminated starting March 1, reversing the concessions granted by the Biden administration.

The action was “having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Additionally, the regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country [the Good Ole’ U.S.A.] back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.”

Venezuela sent two flights by mid-February to bring 190 illegal immigrants home.

Later that month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversaw the transfer of 177 Venezuelan illegal immigrants from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Honduras, where they would be picked up for repatriation.

Trump opened the U.S. naval base’s 30,000-person detainment facility to deportation efforts specifically to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

Among the Venezuelan nationals who have entered the United States illegally are members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which has been accused of violent crimes and taking over apartment complexes in Colorado.

Meanwhile, ICE announced on March 12 that U.S. immigration detention facilities had reached capacity at about 47,600 beds, and the Department of Homeland Security continued its efforts to have those in the country illegally self-deport by launching the CPB Home phone app.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” DHS secretary Kristi Noem said on March 10.

“If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

Ryan Morgan, Jacob Burg, Jack Phillips, and Reuters contributed to this report.