Caracas (EFE).- A Conviasa plane from Mexico City landed in Venezuela on Thursday with 313 repatriated migrants, 151 of them children, according to the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello.
Speaking on the state-run Venezuelan Television Corporation (VTV), Cabello explained that among the children returned, there were six who were “unaccompanied,” in addition to 60 men and 102 women, of whom, he said, 16 were pregnant.
“With this (flight), we would reach 1,610 Venezuelans transferred from the United States,” Cabello said, although the number is 1,784, as previously reported.
He also announced that two more flights would arrive in Venezuela, one on Thursday and another on Friday.
“A flight is coming. We will pick up the comrades in Honduras (…). Tomorrow morning (…) there will be a direct flight from the US,” the Venezuelan official added.
The Minister demanded that the government of El Salvador release the hundreds of Venezuelans who are in prison after the US deported them and linked them to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, based in a Venezuelan jail and which the government of Donald Trump considers a “terrorist” organization.
“We continue to ask (…) the government of El Salvador (…) to return the Venezuelans it has kidnapped,” the official said.
He confirmed that the group of Venezuelan migrants detained in El Salvador had not committed “any crime,” hence, they should not be judged in the Central American country, he added.
“They can not be tried in El Salvador because they have not committed crimes in El Salvador, and if they have committed crimes in the US, it is up to the US government to judge them,” Cabello argued.
This group of Venezuelan migrants is being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison, symbol of the so-called war on gangs that Nayib Bukele’s government promotes under the state of emergency.
According to Cabello, none of the repatriated Venezuelans were linked to the Tren de Aragua gang and promised that if anyone had committed a crime, “the court would meet them.”
“The government of the US has lied when it claims and confirms that the migrants sent to Venezuela are from the Tren de Aragua. It is not true. They are trying to deceive the world,” he stressed. EFE
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