Venezuela accepts migrant flight with Tren de Aragua members: US
(NewsNation) — A plane with nearly 200 undocumented migrants landed Sunday in Venezuela as the South American country resumed accepting repatriation flights from the United States.
The arrival came after the U.S. government reached an agreement with President Nicolás Maduro, who suspended repatriation flights earlier this month when the Treasury Department pulled Chevron’s license to export Venezuelan oil.
The aircraft that landed had 199 undocumented migrants aboard, a Department of Homeland Security official tells NewsNation. They said the group included members of Trend de Aragua, the gang that the Trump administration has designated as a terrorist organization.
The landing comes a week after the Trump administration sent more than 200 alleged gang members, most of them Venezuelans, to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela's Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S., said the resumed repatriations to Venezuela would guarantee “the return of our compatriots to their nation with the safeguard of their Human Rights.”
Rodríguez said his country would work on getting the “brothers kidnapped in El Salvador” returned to their home.
Trump claims most of the deportees sent to El Salvador were TdA members, which he considers an invading force. He has sought to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that allows a president to summarily deport non-citizens during wartime.
A federal judge issued a temporary order halting the deportations under the 18th-century law, but the Trump administration allowed the flights to proceed last weekend. Now, the Justice Department is at loggerheads with the judge over how that occurred.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told NewsNation the Trump administration will respect the judge’s ruling while continuing migrant deportations using other means.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.