CARACAS (AFP) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Monday he will ask the UN to protect the rights of Venezuelan migrants the United States had sent to a prison in El Salvador, accused of being gang members.
“Today I am signing a series of communications for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, for the High Commissioner for Human Rights” and other bodies so that “human rights mechanisms are activated to protect Venezuelan men and women,” Maduro said on his program on state television.
The United States on the weekend flew more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to be imprisoned in El Salvador, after US President Donald Trump invoked wartime legislation to expel them.
The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order – apparently as planes were already headed to El Salvador – raising questions over whether the Trump administration deliberately defied the court decision.
President Nayib Bukele said 238 members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Trump has designated a foreign terrorist organisation, had arrived in El Salvador.
He shared a video on X of men in handcuffs and shackles being transferred from a plane to a heavily guarded convoy.
The presidency also posted photos of prisoners’ heads being shaved upon arrival.
Maduro, accused of stealing elections last July that saw him claim re-election to a third, six-year term, is not recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate president by the opposition and much of the rest of the world.
He said Monday he would seek to have his “kidnapped” compatriots, who he insisted were “not criminals,” repatriated from El Salvador.
“I will not rest until we achieve their rescue and their safe return,” he added.
The head of Venezuela’s parliament said Monday the expulsion amounted to a “crime against humanity.”
