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    Trump claims Maduro willing to give ‘everything’ to ease US tensions

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    Donald Trump used an expletive to threaten the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, claiming that the leftist autocrat had offered major concessions to appease the US.The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday during a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Asked about reports that Maduro offered “everything in his country, all the natural resources” to ease tensions, Trump agreed: “He’s offered everything; you’re right. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”Maduro, who came to power in 2013, has recently shored up his security powers and deployed tens of thousands of troops around the country. He also accused Trump of seeking regime change, an allegation the US president has downplayed.Last week the New York Times reported that Maduro offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in recent months to stave off mounting pressure from the US.Meanwhile, Venezuelan government officials are said to have floated a plan in which Maduro would eventually leave office. The Miami Herald newspaper reported that Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the national assembly, had funneled proposals through intermediaries in Qatar to present themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative.The US has acknowledged carrying out at least five strikes on vessels near Venezuela that it says were transporting drugs, killing at least 27 people.A sixth strike targeted a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean on Thursday, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, who were reportedly rescued and are being held on a navy ship.One source told Reuters that the vessel struck on Thursday moved below the water and was possibly a semi-submersible, which is a submarine-like vessel used by drug traffickers to avoid detection.Trump confirmed to reporters: “We attacked a submarine. That was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs – just so you understand.”He added: “This was not an innocent group of people. I don’t know too many people that have submarines and that was an attack on a drug-carrying loaded-up submarine.”The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was also present, did not dispute that there were survivors and repeatedly said details would be forthcoming.The US has described some of the victims in the first five strikes as Venezuelans, while the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, has suggested some were from his country. In Trinidad, family members of one man believed killed in a strike this week have demanded proof he was a drug trafficker.Venezuela’s government has said the strikes are illegal, amount to murder and are an aggression against the country.Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, relying on the same legal authority used by the George W Bush administration when it declared a war on terror after the September 11 attacks.But legal scholars have warned that the president’s use of overwhelming military force to combat the cartels, along with his authorisation of covert action inside Venezuela, possibly to oust Maduro, stretches the bounds of international law.Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said the attacks violated international human rights law and amounted to extrajudicial executions.“The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, or with alleged criminal groups involved. Under human rights law standards, officials engaging in law enforcement must seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury,” she said.The strikes have caused unease among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, with some Republicans saying they had not received sufficient information on how the strikes were being conducted.Friday’s outburst was not the first that Trump has peppered the language of diplomacy with profanities. In June, frustrated with Israel and Iran attacking each other after a ceasefire, he told a group of reporters that the countries had “been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”. More

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      Trump confirms that he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela

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      Donald Trump confirmed reports on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing US officials familiar with the decision.The US president said he authorized the action for two main reasons.First, he claimed Venezuela had been releasing large numbers of prisoners, including individuals from mental health facilities, into the United States, often crossing the border due to what he described as an open border policy. Trump did not specify which border they were crossing.The second reason, he said, was the large amount of drugs entering the US from Venezuela, much of it trafficked by sea.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” Trump added, but declined to answer when asked if the CIA had the authority to execute Maduro. More

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      Venezuela on edge over Trump regime change whispers: ‘If it does happen we are ready’

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      The mayor of Caracas had come to one of her city’s busiest tube stations wearing a camouflage T-shirt declaring herself a card-carrying combatant – and with a message to match.“They think they’re the owners of the world,” Carmen Meléndez complained of the Trump administration and its pressure campaign against Venezuela’s government. “But if they dare [to invade] we’ll be waiting for them here.”Meléndez said she hoped a US invasion was not on the horizon, even though they had shown themselves to be “a bunch of crazies, who are capable of anything”. “But if it does happen we are ready,” she added, “and we will use all of the weapons we have to defend the homeland.”Mayor Meléndez was at La Rinconada station to supervise an early morning drill: a practice response to fictitious cyberattack on the Caracas underground that had brought its trains to a halt.The rehearse evacuation, ordered by President Nicolás Maduro as part of a nationwide “civil protection and preparation of the people” exercise, came as Donald Trump turned the heat up on Venezuela’s leader to levels rarely seen before.Since early August, when Trump signed a secret directive authorizing military action against Latin America drug cartels, the US president has labelled Maduro a “narco-terrorist” fugitive and advertised a $50m reward for his arrest; deployed marines and warships off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast; and ordered at least four deadly strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats which have killed at least 21.Last week Trump again upped the ante, declaring a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels whose members were now considered “unlawful combatants”.View image in fullscreenWashington has justified its strikes as part of a crackdown on Venezuelan narco-traffickers who the US accuses of flooding its streets with drugs, supposedly at Maduro’s behest. “They’re the enemies of all humanity,” Trump told the UN last month, vowing to blow such “terrorist thugs … out of existence”.But many observers suspect Trump’s counter-narcotics crusade is really a pretext to depose Maduro, either by sparking an internal rebellion against Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian heir or perhaps through direct military intervention within Venezuela itself.Speaking to the New York Times last month, Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she was convinced one of Trump’s “strategic objectives” was “what they call ‘regime change’”. “We will never handover our homeland!” Rodríguez vowed as she announced that Maduro would declare a state of emergency in the event of a US attack.Rodríguez and Meléndez are not the only Maduro allies talking tough in the face of US pressure. One recent evening, the interior minister Diosdado Cabello, appeared on television clutching a heavily annotated copy of a book about the “military thinking” of the Vietnamese revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh. The message was clear: any attempt to topple Maduro’s regime would suck US troops into a bloody quagmire such as the one that unfolded in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and nearly 60,000 American soldiers.Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group, doubted Trump had immediate plans to target Fort Tiuna, the military base where Maduro is thought to live.But Gunson did think Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June had left Venezuela’s leaders genuinely alarmed. In a recent letter to Trump, Maduro tried to defuse the situation, writing: “I respectfully invite you, President, to promote peace through constructive dialogue and mutual understanding throughout the hemisphere.”View image in fullscreen“What Trump did to Iran was a wake up call to the people in government here,” said Gunson. “A lot of analysts thought that wasn’t going to happen … But they did it – and the Iranians had no response. And I think that that was quite sobering for the Chavistas.”The idea of a US intervention is music to the ears of some of Maduro’s political foes, who are desperate to end his 12-year rule during which Venezuela’s economy and democracy have crumbled and millions have fled abroad.In a recent interview, the prominent conservative politician María Corina Machado – whose ally, Edmundo González, is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in last year’s election – hailed Trump’s “visionary” stance. “I totally support his strategy … I’m in favour of the US dismantling this criminal structure,” Machado, who is in hiding in Venezuela, told the Sunday Times.The exiled opposition leader Leopoldo López has said their movement supports “any scenario that helps us transition to democracy”.Robert Evan Ellis, a Latin America specialist who advised the state department on Venezuela policy during Trump’s first administration, saw a “50-50” chance of the opposition’s wish coming true.Trump’s failure to unseat Maduro with a “maximum pressure” campaign during his first term, made it more likely the US president would try to finish the job now, Evan Ellis said. “I think there’s … a certain determination not to essentially feel that he loses this time around as well – so I think that creates incentive,” he said.After the Caribbean boat strikes, Evan Ellis anticipated a “graduated escalation” of US pressure – perhaps air strikes against “narco-planes” or “narco-leaders” on Venezuelan soil: “You don’t just unnecessarily jump from blowing up a couple of ships to pulling the trigger on a major air-land campaign.”View image in fullscreenBut Evan Ellis did not rule out a large-scale “multi-pronged attack”, involving F-35 fighter jets destroying Venezuela’s aerial defences before troops “grab[bed] Maduro wherever he is, based on probably good insider intelligence” and took him to the US. On Thursday, Venezuela’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, said five US “combat aircraft” had been detected flying off his country’s coast.Four days later, on Monday, another key Maduro ally, the national assembly president, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that he had informed US and European authorities of plans for an alleged “false flag operation” attack on the US embassy in Caracas. Rodríguez claimed right-wing extremists had been plotting to target the building with “lethal explosives”.The prospect of a US intervention fills many Venezuelans – even those opposed to Maduro – with dread. “If there’s a war, what will we do?” said Naide González, 58, a cleaner from 23 de Enero, a working class community in Caracas long considered a stronghold of Chavismo.In a recent Guardian interview, Juan González, the White House’s top Latin America official under Joe Biden, called Trump’s military buildup “political theatre” designed to convince Maga voters that he was taking a hard line on drugs and migrants coming from South America. But González feared that if Maduro was deposed, the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war, involving a variety of armed groups including government-linked paramilitaries, criminal organizations and Colombian rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN).“The conditions are ripe here for some kind of protracted low-intensity conflict, if the US gets it wrong – which they may well,” Gunson warned. “This country is absolutely packed from end to end with armed groups of various kinds, none of whom has any incentive to just surrender or stop doing what they’re doing.”David Smilde, a Tulane University Venezuela specialist, said neoconservative Trump officials and hard-line members of Venezuela’s opposition seemed convinced by the “absolutely absurd” idea that Maduro was “hanging on by threads” and that regime change could be achieved “with just a few limited strikes”.“This is the mentality that thought that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a house of cards and Iraq would be a cakewalk once you got rid of Saddam Hussein or took Baghdad,” Smilde added.At La Rinconada, government supporters vowed to resist any foreign intervention as commuters streamed out of the underground into a sunny Caracas morning.Amelia Contreras, a 68-year-old seamstress who is part of Maduro’s Bolivarian militia volunteer group, said she had been receiving first aid and firearms training in preparation for a possible attack. In the event of an incursion, Contreras had been tasked with defending Caracas’s electricity pylons. “We don’t want anyone coming along and interfering here – we won’t allow it,” she said.Kristian Laborín, a 48-year-old member of Maduro’s socialist party, had spent the last three Saturdays undergoing military training but still hoped the US would recoil. “President Trump, there’s still time for us to continue building friendly ties between our peoples,” Laborín said.But if the US president insisted on attacking, Laborín’s comrades would have no choice but to fight back. Parroting a government propaganda line, he said: “You’d be talking about a Hundred Years’ War!” More

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      Trump administration doubles reward for arrest of Venezuela’s president to $50m

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      The Trump administration is doubling to $50m a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narcotraffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Thursday in a video statement announcing the reward.Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15m reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25m – the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11attacks.Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.The prisoner swap sparked controversy, as one of the Americans freed in the exchange is an ex-US soldier who was convicted of killing three people in Spain in 2016. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, found guilty in Venezuela last year, was flown to Texas alongside the other nine freed Americans, whom rights groups had deemed “political prisoners”.Bondi said the justice department has seized more than $700m in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7m tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.In her announcement, Bondi repeated claims linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Venezuelan gang, saying: “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA … to bring deadly violence to our country … He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”Some experts have cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims that TdA is “invading America”. The narrative that TdA is a state-sponsored terrorist group wreaking havoc on the US has been used to fuel the president’s aggressive and broad attacks on Venezuelan immigrants, with policies that advocates say have trampled on people’s due-process rights. In one high-profile case, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker, was expelled to El Salvador after the US claimed his tattoos were proof he was a TdA member and “security threat”.Experts have noted that the Venezuelan government had previously protected TdA, but it was unlikely the gang was acting “at the direction” of the Maduro regime, as the White House has claimed.The Washington Post reported in April that a National Intelligence Council assessment concluded there were some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and TdA, but said the gang was not commanded by Venezuela’s leader.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      What is Tren de Aragua and has the group ‘invaded’ the United States?

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      The Trump administration has fixated on portraying a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, or TdA, as a state-sponsored international terrorist organization that has invaded the US.Donald Trump uses the argument to justify extreme enforcement measures against Venezuelan immigrants and cast a cloud across the Venezuelan diaspora, especially communities in the US.The US president claims the criminal group “is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare” here, which in turn should allow agents to arrest Venezuelans and exile them to Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador’s Cecot prison without even a court hearing.Yet experts say the claims do not reflect reality and, instead, Donald Trump has concocted a bogeyman to fuel his extreme immigration crackdown.What is Tren de Aragua?TdA is a gang that originated in Venezuela but has since expanded its reach to other countries in Latin America, alongside a more general mass diaspora of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans fleeing autocratic rule under the president, Nicolás Maduro.Some scholars track the group’s early days to 2005, when a trade union’s members started to embezzle funds and extort contractors while working on a railroad project – hence the “tren”, or “train”, in the Aragua region.TdA then took off in Venezuela’s Aragua state around 2014, within the Tocorón prison, where members had access to restaurants, a swimming pool, a zoo, a nightclub and other amenities atypical of a lock-up. The penitentiary became TdA’s headquarters – where leaders on the inside directed criminal activity on the outside – until 2023, when the Venezuelan government raided Tocorón and the gang began to fragment.One scholar wrote: “The TdA is of modest prominence and is nowhere near as established as other gangs in Central and South America.” Some of those more influential criminal organizations, such as MS-13 and Mexico’s cartels, have long had a foothold in – or even have their origins in – the US.That said, TdA has been powerful enough to torment and exploit other Venezuelans at home and abroad, preying particularly on vulnerable women, who are forced into the sex industry to pay off their debt after the gang smuggles them to nearby countries such as Chile, Colombia or Peru.TdA members have also started working with Mexican cartels, infiltrating groups of immigrants and then colluding with Mexico’s organized crime networks to extort them.Has Tren de Aragua ‘invaded’ the US?Tren de Aragua does have a presence in the US, but that presence is diffuse, uncoordinated, and on a smaller scale than the Trump administration’s repeatedly sounding the alarm and citing TdA in immigration-related arrests might make it seem. Three experts put it bluntly when they wrote for the New York Times: “Tren de Aragua is not invading America.”That’s not to say that individual TdA members – or people purporting to be TdA members for clout – haven’t caused real harm and suffering for many communities across the US. In Miami, a former Venezuelan police officer was reportedly abducted and murdered by a TdA member. Another supposed gang member allegedly shot two New York police officers. And the criminal organization has seemingly imported its sex-trafficking model, exploiting Venezuelan women who owe them for transportation into the US.Even so, InSight Crime, a thinktank that studies organized crime across the Americas, has said that TdA is growing weaker, not stronger, and “now operates more as a loose collection of franchises than a cohesive organization”.Earlier this month, US authorities revealed federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, firearm offenses and robbery against 27 alleged current or alleged former TdA members and associates, indictments and arrests that attorney general Pam Bondi said would “devastate TdA’s infrastructure”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy late last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was looking into more than 600 immigrants in the US suspected of having some connection to TdA, though whether they were victims, witnesses or gang members remained unclear.That number represents fewer than 0.09% of the 700,000 Venezuelans who have resettled in the US, many of whom feel they are being smeared.The criteria cited as justification for alleging detainees or people being removed from the US without due process are TdA members include suspects making hand signs, wearing Chicago Bulls paraphernalia or similar, or having certain tattoos, which prominent researchers of gangs have said are not strong indicators, or indicia at all, of gang membership.Meanwhile, several federal judges say essentially that Trump’s using the AEA and claims of “war” and “invasion” are invalid, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed lawsuits across the country challenging its use to skirt due process.Is Tren de Aragua working with Venezuela’s government?Trump is relying on highly controversial measures, chiefly the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, to summarily deport people the administration alleges are TdA members, many of whom have not been charged with crimes. His justification is that the gang is acting “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela”.That’s unlikely. TdA was protected by the Venezuelan government in the past, according to InSight Crime. But that agreement no longer stands, with the raid on the criminal organization’s prison headquarters a case in point.The Washington Post reports that a recent National Intelligence Council internal assessment – which relied on information from the US’s 18 intelligence agencies – determined that while TdA has some low-level contacts in Maduro’s government, it is in no way commanded by Maduro. This makes Trump’s using the invasion argument to bypass due process flimsy – and contrary to the US supreme court’s insistence of the right for individuals to challenge the government. More

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      Venezuelan immigrants deported from US to Venezuela via Honduras

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      A group of Venezuelan immigrants have been deported from the US to Honduras and then sent on to Venezuela, after an apparent deal between the three countries.The flights came one day after a Venezuelan government official announced on social media it would resume accepting deportees from the US. Deportations from the US to Venezuela, which have rarely taken place, have been a point of dispute for the Trump administration.Sunday’s indirect deportation flight to Venezuela comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela, and an increase in operations targeting Venezuelan immigrants in the US.The Venezuelan government official’s announcement also alluded to the highly contentious expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last week.“Migrating is not a crime, and we will not rest until we accomplish the return of all who need it, and until we rescue our brothers that are kidnapped in El Salvador,” said Jorge Rodríguez Gomez, the president of the Venezuelan national assembly.The Honduran foreign minister announced on Sunday night that 199 Venezuelans were deported from the US to a military base in Honduras on Sunday. From there, the migrants were placed on Venezuelan planes and returned to Venezuela.“This process shows us again the positive cooperation between the government of Honduras, the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Enrique Reina said on X.According to the US state department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Trump administration expects to see “a consistent flow of deportation flights to Venezuela going forward”.Since the Trump administration took office two months ago, there has been heightened pressure and aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In early February, the Venezuelan government sent two planes to the US to pick up deportees and returned them to Venezuela. At the time, the two flights were seen as a breakthrough in relations between the US and Venezuela.However, scheduled flights were again placed on hold by the Venezuelan government, after Donald Trump reversed the 2022 license given to Chevron to operate in Venezuela. Last week, secretary of state Marco Rubio threatened “new, severe, and escalating sanctions” on Venezuela if it did not accept deportations.On Monday, the treasury department published a license authorizing the wind down of Chevron’s work in Venezuela.The first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras took place last month, when the US deported 177 Venezuelan immigrants previously detained at the Guantánamo Bay naval base. The US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Honduran foreign minister at the time both announced that deportation.The Honduran government has strong diplomatic relations with Venezuela and their involvement in the transfer of Venezuelan deportees raises questions about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Trump administration and the two Latin American governments. Before the US president took office, Honduran leftwing president Xiomara Castro had threatened to expel the US military from a base in the Central American country, in response to Trump’s threats to engage in mass deportations.But after February’s first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras, Reina confirmed that Castro’s husband – former president reformist Manuel Zelaya– had coordinated with Trump envoys Mauricio Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell for the transfer of the migrants.In a shakeup to US and Honduran relations, Castro’s brother-in-law and Zelaya’s brother, was previously accused in a US federal court of collaborating with drug traffickers. Her predecessor Juan Orland0 Hernández was convicted and sentenced in New York of drug trafficking.All of this comes amid heightened US aggression towards the Venezuelan government. Earlier this year, before Trump assumed the presidency, the US state department announced a reward of up to $25m, for information leading to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In March 2020, under Trump’s first presidency, Maduro and other top officials were indicted in a New York federal court of drug trafficking and related crimes.On Monday, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on any country that purchases oil from Venezuela, saying the country “has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse”.When announcing the secondary tariffs, Trump added, without proof, that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent to the US, tens of thousands of “undercover” gang members. In late February, the state department designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization. The Trump administration has continually, also without proof, claimed that many Venezuelan immigrants in the US belong to the gang, and have been sent by the Venezuelan government.Last week, the Trump administration quickly, and without due process, expelled 238 Venezuelan migrants from the US to El Salvador after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. When invoking the Act, Trump said that the Tren de Aragua gang “is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the Maduro regime”.The Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a high-security “terrorism” prison, run by the rightwing Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele.In the days that followed, news organizations began publishing details of the operation, including that some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Trump administration continues to say that the rendition operation was legal, and that all Venezuelans expelled in the operation were gang members. A federal judge blocked the administration from expelling people via the Alien Enemies Act, and on Monday, he ruled migrants are entitled to individual hearings before being expelled.Despite the Trump administration claiming that alleged Tren de Aragua members were sent by the Venezuelan government, an intelligence document suggests otherwise. Reporting from the New York Times last Thursday revealed that the CIA and the National Security Agency contradict Trump’s claims of the Venezuelan government’s ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, raising questions about Trump’s invocation of the war-time Alien Enemies Act. The justice department announced a criminal investigation into the source of the New York Times’ reporting. More

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      ‘We no longer go out alone’: what happens after Trump revokes temporary protected status?

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      The Trump administration’s decision to end temporary humanitarian protections for Venezuelans who came to the United States seeking refuge in recent years has plunged hundreds of thousands of people into uncertainty. Many worry they could be deported back to the autocratic regime they tried to flee.“We lived in fear and we are still afraid,” said Jesús, who fled Venezuela with his wife and children, crossing through Colombia, the Darién jungle in Panama and then Mexico, before arriving in Texas in 2021. His wife had worked as a civil servant in Venezuela, and had grown increasingly alarmed by the government’s crackdown on free speech and resisted participating in pro-government demonstrations. That’s when the couple began receiving threats. “They even chased us into our home,” Jesús said.In 2023, his family secured temporary protected status (TPS) – allowing them to legally live and work in the US – and assumed they would be safe for a while.But earlier this month, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, abruptly decided to end TPS for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans in the US, including Jesús. Within 60 days, the administration plans to strip away the designation, saying that the situation in Venezuela has “notably improved”.“You can imagine – this came as a shock,” Jesús said. “We suffered a political persecution in our country and now we are doing it here as well.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of the Trump administration’s temporary protected status decision, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (929) 418-7175.For the past 35 years, TPS has offered immigration status to people who have fled countries experiencing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster or extraordinary conditions that make it unsafe to return there. What is especially harrowing for many people with temporary protections, now that it’s being taken away, is how easy they will be to find, and deport. In order to secure TPS, they had to submit all their information, their home addresses and histories to the government.Immigrant advocacy groups have been encouraging Venezuelans with temporary protections to find a legal service provider as soon as possible. They have also been providing “know your rights” training. “This is the same information that they’re giving to people who have been long-residing undocumented immigrants – because the same rights will apply to people who have TPS, who may lose their status,” said Laura Vazquez, director of immigrant integration at UnidosUS.View image in fullscreenAs the Trump administration tries to ramp up deportations, people with expired protections who have not managed to apply for asylum or other avenues to remain in the US permanently could be easy targets. Jesús and his family are keenly aware of this.Though they have applied for asylum and are awaiting an appointment with the immigration courts in 2027, and would be protected from deportation while their case is pending, Jesús still worries about being caught up in raids. “I hear a lot about how some people don’t have their papers respected,” he said. “We no longer go out alone – only when it’s necessary for work.”His four kids – ranging from preschool to high school-aged – have been feeling the tension too. Amid news that Ice agents are conducting raids in major cities, and will be authorized to enter schools, they have asked him “Papá, they won’t look for us, will they?”Jesús and his wife have started ordering all their food and supplies online, rather than trying to stop by the grocery store after their shifts. They also started looking into selling their home and their car, so that they will have enough funds to pay legal fees and cover expenses in case they are unable to legally work if their temporary status is taken away.In recent days, they have also started thinking about where else they could go if they are not allowed to remain in the US. More than anything, they want to avoid getting deported to Venezuela. “It’s like they’re trying to throw us into the lions’ cage, as we say in my country,” Jesús said. “Because they would be sending us to persecution and certain death.”Trump had previously tried to terminate protections for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan during his first term. Back then, however, officials proposed allowing those who were affected to keep their protected status for 12 to 18 months before it ended. But that was challenged in court, and people with temporary status were ultimately able to keep their status when Joe Biden took office and rescinded Trump’s TPS terminations.This time around, the administration has moved to end protections earlier, revoking the outgoing Biden administration’s decision to extend the protections for Venezuelans until October 2026. About 350,000 Venezuelans who received TPS in 2023 will lose their temporary status 60 days from when the administration posted notice this month, and another 250,000 who received the status in 2021 will lose the protections in September. The move is likely to face legal challenges.View image in fullscreen“Once again you have the Trump administration actively trying to strip immigration status of several hundred thousands people who are lawfully present and employed,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor who led the lawsuit that blocked Trump from terminating TPS protections during his first term. Doing so will strip away work permits for people who work in industries across the US, and could have a “catastrophic economic impact” in communities across the US.“There’s also the humanitarian impact of telling 300,000 people they should just go back to a country that is, in this case, extremely unsafe. Everybody knows it. I mean, everybody knows Venezuela is a very precarious and dangerous place to live, which is why millions of people have fled,” he added.In Noem’s termination notice, she argued that Venezuelans no longer needed protection, because there had been “notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime”. She also added that it was “contrary to the national interest” to allow TPS holders to stay in the US, claiming that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had come to the US, and that US cities could not bear the financial burden of helping new arrivals settle.Advocates questioned the logic of rescinding immigrants’ ability to work and contribute to the communities. Experts have also questioned how the administration could cite improvements, given the state department’s warnings that Venezuela remains in crisis. In recent months, the government of the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has been rounding up hundreds who protested against fraudulent election results – as well as people who happened to be near protests but seemingly had no involvement in politics. The Biden administration had also issued a $25m bounty for Maduro’s arrest.Immigration advocates are encouraging all Venezuelan TPS holders who might be eligible to apply for asylum in the US as soon as possible – as doing so would allow them their best chance of staying in country. But the process is complex and can be expensive. “It’s not a small thing, especially when the asylum law is so complicated and very difficult to do without an attorney,” said Arulanantham.Mary, a mother of four in Georgia, said she has been having panic attacks and nosebleeds since learning that she and her family could lose their protected status. “I’ve spent six days crying in my bedroom,” she said. “My kids have been crying too. They run into the closet every time they hear a knock on the door.”Her husband was nearly killed in Venezuela, escaping the country with a crack in his skull. Mary, too, was persecuted. As a young law student in Venezuela, she had studied with a prominent opposition leader. “It is impossible to return there,” she said. “If I set foot again in Venezuela I am sure that they will either put my husband in prison or kill him. And they’ll do the same to me.”She had tried to apply for asylum once already, only to discover later that she had been swindled by her immigration lawyer – who had failed to properly file her paperwork, and that she had been issued a deportation order. Her temporary status has been the only thing protecting her. The family now has an appointment with another lawyer at the end of March, but she worries that there won’t be enough time to sort out their affairs before their protected status expires. She worries about where her family could even go, and how she will be able to provide for her youngest son, who is autistic. Even if they do survive returning to Venezuela, she said, how could she possibly find the special education programs her son needs there?“When the secretary of security told us that all of us, all of us who crossed the border were criminals, we were from the Tren de Augua gang, that really affected me,” she said. “After nearly four years here, my husband and I don’t have a single ticket, we don’t have a single fine.”Now, all she can do is wait and hope, she added. “I am clinging to God’s word,” she said. “He’s our only protection.”The names of TPS holders in this piece have been changed to protect their safety and the safety of their families More

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      in US Politics

      'What a spectacle!': US adversaries revel in post-election chaos

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      Rivals and enemies of the United States have come together to revel in the messiest US election in a generation, mocking the delay in vote processing and Donald Trump’s claims of electoral fraud in barely veiled criticisms of Washington’s political activism abroad.“What a spectacle!” crowed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office.”With a large dose of schadenfreude, Washington’s fiercest critics declared deep concern about the US elections and the state of the country’s democracy.Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman on Thursday panned the “obvious shortcomings of the American electoral system”, calling the framework “archaic”.“It’s a show, you can’t call it anything but that,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s Duma, said earlier this week. “They say it should be seen as a standard for democracy. I don’t think it’s the standard.”In China, state media savaged the delayed results, with one daily writing that the process looked a “bit like a developing country”.Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, could not resist baiting the US over what he called its “surprising electoral process”, and seemed so amused that at one point he broke into song with a rendition of the theme tune to the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant: “On a night as beautiful as this, either of them could win,” he crooned, before adding with a chuckle: “The United States. I don’t stick my nose in.” In two recent local elections, he noted, all the votes had been counted by 11pm.As a parliamentary campaign kicked off in Venezuela this week, Maduro claimed there were important lessons the US could learn from its elections rather than lecturing the world about democracy. Venezuela was a showcase of “civilised and peaceful” voting using “proven and transparent technology” and biometric voting machines that provided same day results, he said.Trump has spent the last two years unsuccessfully trying to topple the Venezuelan president and in a Wednesday night broadcast Maduro delighted in the electoral confusion gripping his northern neighbour.“The state department puts out statements that say: ‘In this country we don’t recognise the election. In that country we don’t like the election. In the other country we don’t like this or that,’” Maduro said, adding that the US would be better off focusing on its own problems.As Trump demanded states stop counting mail-in ballots, the US embassy in Abidjan issued a poorly timed statement urging Côte d’Ivoire’s leaders to “show commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law”. “We also need a Côte d’Ivoire statement on US elections,” quipped one BBC editor on Twitter.For many, it was a chance to give the US a taste of its own medicine. “Neither free nor fair,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russian state-backed RT, parroting the language of a UN or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) statement.And the OSCE itself did weigh in, with mission leader Michael Georg Link attacking Trump for making “baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies” and “[harming] public trust in democratic institutions”.The irony was not lost on many at home. A cartoon by the Russian critic Sergei Elkin made the rounds on Thursday, featuring an elderly babushka lugging buckets of water past a man in a rundown village somewhere in Russia. “They still haven’t finished counting in Pennsylvania and in Michigan,” the man says. A stray dog walks along an unpaved street behind him. More

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      in World Politics

      Mike Pompeo’s Art of Indirect Involvement in Venezuela

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      Two American men have been detained by the Venezuelan military following “a botched beach landing in the fishing village of Chuao,” the Associated Press reports. They were reportedly attempting to invade Venezuela and capture President Nicolas Maduro, apparently as a prelude to installing America’s favorite unelected president, Juan Guaido, as the new head of state. Both […] More