Venezuela: Deportation Flights Bring Back Women and Children, Guantánamo Detainees

Caracas, February 25, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government has welcomed hundreds of deported nationals back to the country in recent days.

On Monday morning, an airplane from state airline Conviasa carrying 242 Venezuelans arrived from Mexico. In contrast to prior repatriation flights that consisted entirely of adult men, the latest group included women and children.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and a multidisciplinary team once again met the migrants at the Simón Bolívar International Airport near the capital. The Venezuelan official told reporters that the return process was coordinated with the Claudia Sheinbaum government and that further Conviasa flights from Mexico were expected in the coming weeks.

“The different state institutions are ready to attend to the returned nationals, registering their identities and providing medical and psychological reviews,” Cabello said.

The minister added that Caracas did not know at the time whether the deportees had been sent from US soil to Mexico or if they had never managed to cross the border into the US.

Cabello highlighted that the repatriation efforts were part of the Nicolás Maduro government’s “Return to the Homeland Plan,” a program that has helped tens of thousands of Venezuelans come back to the country since 2018.

The interior minister stated that security bodies would run background checks on adults for open cases or criminal priors if necessary. However, he rejected the narrative pushed by US officials that all the deported Venezuelans are criminals.

“We run rigorous background checks because we are told we are receiving all kinds of outlaws from the US,” Cabello affirmed. “But this is a small minority.”

Monday’s repatriated group was the third to land in Venezuela since a high-profile meeting between Maduro and White House Special Envoy Richard Grenell in late January. According to reports, one of the main discussion points was Caracas accepting deportation flights as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants.

In a recent interview, Grenell said that White House policy toward Venezuela was not centered on regime change and that Washington wanted a “different relationship” with the Venezuelan president.

“We’re very clear-eyed about the Venezuelan government and Maduro, but Donald Trump is someone who doesn’t want to do regime change,” he told the Epoch Times.

On February 10, 190 Venezuelan nationals were flown to the country from a US military base in Texas. Ten days later, a second group of 177 Venezuelans arrived from the US base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, via Honduras.

Since the beginning of February, US authorities began sending detainees, allegedly with final deportation orders, to its infamous overseas military facility. Legal aid organizations challenged the administration’s move for its human rights violations, including depriving the arrested migrants from accessing legal counsel.

Detainees’ relatives likewise pleaded their innocence, with some arrested and transferred to the base after holding interviews with border authorities. For its part, the Maduro government also condemned the Guantánamo transfer as “unjust.” 

The February 20 flight cleared all detainees from the base. According to the New York Times, US authorities transferred 17 migrants to Guantánamo on Sunday, though it reportedly includes no Venezuelan citizens.

Upon taking office, the Trump administration revoked its predecessor’s extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans, leaving as many as 600,000 at risk of deportation in the coming months. Rights organizations have filed lawsuits challenging the White House’s decision.

The White House has additionally talked up the threat of Tren de Aragua, designating it a foreign terrorist organization alongside Mexican cartels and Salvadorian gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13. 

Tren de Aragua is reported to have emerged in Venezuela in the early 2010s, through a combination of a construction syndicate in a railway project and a growing foothold in Venezuelan prisons. Judicial authorities undertook large-scale operations in 2022-2023 to root out criminal enterprises operating inside jails.

The Maduro government has affirmed that Tren de Aragua has been dismantled in the country, instead alleging that the group’s operations abroad are tied to Venezuelan far-right factions.

Edited by Cira Pascual Marquina from Caracas and José Luis Granados Ceja from Mexico City, Mexico.