The Trump administration resumed deportation flights to Venezuela this week, just over a month after the earthquakes that devastated several regions of the country and left more than 6,000 dead. The first operation transferred 147 Venezuelan immigrants, marking the reactivation of a process that had been interrupted after the emergency.
According to information published by the Washington Examiner, the flight landed on Monday at the General José Antonio Anzoátegui International Airport, in the city of Barcelona, where the Venezuelan authorities assured that the returnees were received “with dignity” and under the established protocols.
“The General José Antonio Anzoátegui International Airport in Barcelona received them with dignity, following all the necessary protocols to ensure a happy reunion in our nation,” the Venezuelan authorities noted on social networks.
Deportation flights resume
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) avoided confirming whether there will be new operations in the coming days.
“For reasons of operational security, we will not confirm future deportation operations,” the agency responded to the aforementioned newspaper.
Among these measures is the end of various immigration protections that had benefited hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, leaving them exposed to detention and deportation procedures.
Doubts persist after the tragedy
The return of flights also revives questions about an incident that occurred on June 24, when two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 shook Venezuela.
According to the report, hours before the earthquakes, another group of Venezuelan immigrants had arrived from Miami and was accommodated in a hotel that later collapsed due to the earthquake.
Until now, neither the United States nor the Venezuelan authorities have made public the list of passengers on that flight, the official number of deaths or the identity of the survivors, a situation that continues to raise questions about the transparency of the case.
