The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, said Monday that his government has repatriated so far this year to 8,743 migrants who, he said, were in prisons of the United States immigration and customs control service (ICE).
“We have returned 8,743 migrants who were in ICE prisons,” said the Chavista leader in his weekly program ‘with Maduro +’, transmitted by the Venezuelan state television (VTV), in which he was accompanied by nationals who have returned to the Caribbean country, among some of the detainees in El Salvador after being deported by the United States.
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The president explained that, of that total, 6,117 were men and 1,444 women, and indicated that they returned through the government ‘return to the country’.
In the same way, he explained that among the repatriated there are 623 boys, 559 girls and 52 pregnant women.
Maduro mentioned that 47 migrant repatriation flights have been made in the first half of the year, and stressed that they correspond to an average of eight trips per month.
Caracas agreed to receive deportees from US at the end of January, after Richard Grenelll, special envoy from the Donald Trump administration, met in the Venezuelan capital with Maduro.
This Friday, 251 Venezuelans arrived in their country, including seven of 31 children that the Government of Caracas denounced as “kidnapped” by US authorities.
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The minors were transferred in an American plane that took off from Houston, Texas.
Also on Friday, 252 migrant Venezuelans arrested since March in El Salvador whose liberation was achieved after an unprecedented exchange between Caracas and Washington-Aún without diplomatic relations-which included the release of a group of political prisoners and ten Americans detained in the Caribbean nation.
The negotiation between Venezuela and the US had as an ally the former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, according to Chavismo leaders.
