CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday that Venezuelans deported over the weekend to El Salvador by the United States have been denied due process.
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.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera; Writing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle and Chizu Nomiyama)
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