CARACAS (Reuters) -Venezuelans deported over the weekend to El Salvador by the United States have been denied due process, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday.
The lawmaker added during a press conference that the people deported under a Trump administration claim that they belong to the Tren de Aragua gang are not known to have committed any crimes in the United States or El Salvador, and that Venezuela will do everything it can to have them returned home.
The Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act’s wartime powers to rapidly deport more than 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang from the U.S. despite a court order forbidding it to do so.
Rodriguez also said that he will ask the government of President Nicolas Maduro to issue a warning for Venezuelans not to travel to the United States, because it is not a safe place, and he urged Venezuelans who have migrated there to return.
“We will do everything we have to do so that our compatriots will return home, we will send all the planes we have to send to any part of the world,” he stated.
Of the more than 600 migrants who have been returned to Venezuela from the United States and Mexico on deportation flights since February, just 16 were facing some sort of judicial process and none were members of the Tren de Aragua, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on state television.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera; Writing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle, Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler)
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