Venezuela Says It Will Resume Accepting U.S. Deportation Flights

Venezuela announced Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resume accepting deportation flights carrying migrants who were in the United States illegally, with the first one landing as soon as Sunday.

Part of Venezuela’s willingness to accept the flights appeared related to the plight of Venezuelan migrants whom the Trump administration recently sent to notorious prisons in El Salvador with little to no due process. In a statement on Saturday, a representative for the Venezuelan government said: “Migration isn’t a crime, and we will not rest until we achieve the return of all of those in need and rescue our brothers kidnapped in El Salvador.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Saturday, though one of the president’s close allies, Richard Grenell, said earlier this month that the Venezuelans had agreed to accept the flights.

Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, suspended the deportation cooperation after the Trump administration revoked a Biden-era policy that allowed more oil to be produced in Venezuela and exported.

Since the suspension of the flights, Mr. Maduro has come under intense pressure from the Trump administration, which has been pressing various Latin American nations to take in more deportees. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that Venezuela would face new “severe and escalating” sanctions if it refused to accept its repatriated citizens.

The Trump administration has continued to stonewall the judge’s questions about the deportations to El Salvador. “The government is not being terribly cooperative at this point,” said the judge, James E. Boasberg, at a hearing on Friday. “But I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order and who was responsible.”

The agreement to resume the deportation flights to Venezuela also comes a day after the Trump administration said that it would end a Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the United States lawfully and work for up to two years.