MEXICO CITY (AP) – The Biden administration will resume deporting Venezuelan migrants, the largest single group encountered at the United States (US)-Mexico border last month, back to their economically troubled country as their arrivals continue to grow.
US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking in Mexico City on Thursday, cited the new measure as one of the “strict consequences” the Biden administration is pairing with the expansion of legal pathways for asylum seekers.
“Our two countries are being challenged by an unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere,” Mayorkas said, referring to Mexico.
The repatriation flights are expected to begin shortly, said two US officials, though they did not provide specific details on when the flights would begin taking off.
The officials were not authorised to disclose details of the government’s plan and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The resumption of deportation flights comes not long after the administration increased protected status for thousands of Venezuelans who had previously arrived to the US, they must have entered the country before July 31 of this year to be eligible for temporary protected status.
In making the recent expansion of protections official, President Joe Biden’s administration said just this week that it had determined that “extraordinary and temporary conditions continue to prevent Venezuelan nationals from returning in safety.”
Mayorkas on Thursday addressed the contrast with the announcement just days later of more deportations, saying “we have made a determination it is safe to return Venezuelan nationals who arrived in the United States subsequent to July 31 and do not have a legal basis to remain here”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who led a US delegation to Mexico, added that “we have an ironclad commitment to provide protection for those who qualify. That remains paramount in everything we’re doing.”
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service criticised the move to resume deportations noting the apparent contradiction with the expansion of temporary protected status.
“Returning thousands of Venezuelans to the same unimaginably dangerous conditions they just fled is a profoundly problematic policy for the world’s humanitarian leader to adopt,” the organisation’s CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said in a statement.
Administration officials would not discuss details about how frequently deportation flights would be going to Venezuela or describe how Venezuela agreed to accept back their citizens except to say that, like other countries around the world, the US has long encouraged Venezuela to accept back its nationals.
Cuba announced earlier this year that it would begin accepting Cuban deportees but there has only been one flight a month.
The US had been returning some Venezuelans via commercial flights, but in relatively small numbers and through third countries.
In Venezuela, the government said it had reached an agreement with US officials for a safe and orderly repatriation.
“Venezuelan migration in recent years is a direct result of the application of unilateral coercive measures and a blockade of our economy,” Venezuela’s foreign ministry said via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It said the government would support repatriated Venezuelans.
