CARACAS (Reuters) -A diplomatic spat between the United States and Venezuela flared on Thursday as the U.S. government denied Venezuela’s claims of repatriation flights from Mexico, while Venezuela accused Washington of blocking them.
The back-and-forth comes as a planeload of deported Venezuelans touched down on Venezuelan soil after departing from Mexico, in what appeared to be part of U.S.
President Donald Trump’s push to rapidly expel migrants.
While 311 Venezuelans previously in the United States were returned on a plane from Mexico to Caracas earlier in the day, the U.S.
Department of State’s Western Hemisphere office accused the government of President Nicolas Maduro of lying about the flights.
“Despite media reports, repatriation flights to Venezuela via Mexico are not taking place today.
Maduro must stop misleading and schedule consistent, weekly, repatriation flights,” according to a U.S. government post on social media.
The post was published just minutes before the plane arrived and did not make reference to the flight that landed in the Venezuelan capital.
Thursday’s flight brought the total of recently-deported Venezuelan migrants to 920, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello told state television.
The minister, a top Maduro ally, claimed the flight was the result of a “direct agreement with the Mexican government,” but he did not provide further details.
Venezuela’s Congress chief Jorge Rodriguez argues that the South American country is ready to resume direct flights from the United States, but he accused U.S.
officials of blocking them.
“We have everything in place to resume flights… The only thing preventing these flights is the U.S. State Department,” he told the government-run broadcaster.
The United States deported over 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador last weekend.
The deportees are being held in a controversial prison facility even as a U.S. judge has questioned the legality of the process.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas in Caracas; Writing by Natalia Siniawski and Sarah Morland; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and David Alire Garcia)
