Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has released documents showing that the Trump administration has surreptitiously deported over 100 Venezuelans back to their home country this year. The deportations have been made using the third country of Trinidad and Tobago to conceal the actual destination of the deportees, despite the covid-19 crisis and the human rights violations taking place in Venezuela, to the magnitude of being labeled crimes against humanity by the United Nations Human Rights Council last month.
The deportations occurred by circumventing a 2019 U.S. law forbidding the forcible return of refugees to a place where their lives or freedom are in danger. Since the passage of this law, the United States had suspended flights to and from Venezuelan airports. Because Caribbean countries generally have few protections for refugees and receive significant aid and support from the United States, Trinidad and Tobago has been used as the supposed destination of the deported Venezuelans, from which they have been subsequently transported to their home country.
Senator Menendez cited State Department communications confirming the continuation of deportations, as well as a February news briefing of Elliott Abrams, special envoy for Venezuela, stating that he would not say there was a “complete freeze” on the deportation of Venezuelans. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senator Menendez wrote: “new documents provided to my office confirm that U.S. deportations to Venezuela continued via third countries at least until March 2020, while the Trump Administration has offered little assurance that it will not continue to forcibly return Venezuelans to a regime the United Nations recently stated has committed crimes against humanity.” The UN report cited cases of torture and extrajudicial killings by Venezuelan security forces, using techniques like electric shocks, genital mutilation, and asphyxiation and accounting for thousands of wrongful deaths in the country.
“U.S. foreign policy should be to counter the Maduro regime’s systematic abuses of human rights. The administration’s continued deportation of Venezuelan nationals appears to undermine these policies,” he added.
Critics have accused the Trump administration of hypocrisy in their dealings with Venezuela and the Venezuelan diaspora, millions who have been forced to flee their home country. Though the Trump administration has made the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro central to its Latin American foreign policy, appealing to conservative Latino voters in Florida, its policies have failed to dislodge the Venezuelan dictator or to improve the worsening humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. The administration has also refused to grant fleeing Venezuelans in the United States refuge, as evidenced by the secret deportations.
President Trump himself, though able to unilaterally grant Venezuelans Temporary Protected Status (TPS) through executive order, has refused to do so, and Senate Republicans have continuously blocked the passage of TPS protections for Venezuelans. Additionally, the administration continues to impose stringent requirements on asylum protection applications, in line with its overall hardened stance on immigration. Though the number of Venezuelans seeking asylum has risen dramatically in recent years, these requests are being denied in large numbers. Last year, for example, 33% of all asylum cases were denied. In fiscal year 2020, 46% of applications were denied.