Venezuelans deported over the weekend to El Salvador by the United States have been denied due process, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly Jorge Rodriguez has said.
The politician added during a press conference that the people deported under a Trump administration claim that they belong to the Tren de Aragua gang are not known to have committed any crimes in the United States or El Salvador, and that Venezuela will do everything it can to have them returned home.
The Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act’s wartime powers to rapidly deport more than 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang from the US despite a US federal judge’s order forbidding it to do so.
Mr Rodriguez said he will ask the government of President Nicolas Maduro to issue a warning for Venezuelans not to travel to the US due to safety issues, and he urged Venezuelans who have migrated there to return.
“We will do everything we have to do so that our compatriots will return home, we will send all the planes we have to send to any part of the world,” he stated.
At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the deportations a “counter-terrorism operation” and argued they had technically complied with the judge’s instructions at the time they were delivered.
Advocacy groups representing some of the deportees disagreed, saying they were “extremely concerned” that the White House had defied the court’s orders.
Of the more than 600 migrants who have been returned to Venezuela from the US and Mexico on deportation flights since February, just 16 were facing some sort of judicial process and none were members of the Tren de Aragua, interior minister Diosdado Cabello said on state television. – Reuters
