Venezuela refuses to accept illegal immigrant criminals deported by US

Venezuela has stopped accepting deportation flights of violent criminal illegal immigrants deported from the United States and Mexico, tarnishing a bilateral agreement that allows them to be transported back to the South American country.

The decision comes as Venezuelan illegal immigrants have been involved in a violent crime wave across the US, much of it suspected gang activity. President Nicolas Maduro tore up the deal which had been established in October after the Biden administration reinstated some of the economic sanctions it had previously lifted on Venezuela, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. This includes sanctions on Venezuela's oil and gold industry.

The Biden admin now faces a headache as they won't be able to deport these violent criminals back home via flights.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, an illegal immigrant originally from Venezuela, was accused of killing University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. He entered the US in September through El Paso, Texas with his wife and her 5-year-old son. His wife said that they got married in order to combine their asylum cases. They were transported via bus to New York City. He later moved to Georgia after he and his wife separated.

Riley's body was found in a wooded area of the University of Georgia campus in Athens on Thursday.

In New York City, officials are scrambling to contain a wave of violent crime carried out by Venezuelan illegal immigrant gangs. According to NYPD, the gang known as Tren de Aragua is responsible for dozens of robberies and terrorizing residents in the Big Apple.

Two of its gang members were arrested over the viral brutal attack on NYPD officers in Times Square last month.

Additionally, the Venezuelan gang is allegedly responsible for more than 60 robberies.

In another New York case, a 15-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant was arrested for shooting at a security guard in Times Square. The bullet struck a Brazilian tourist in the leg.

Furthermore, four Venezuelan illegal immigrants were arrested in Chicago last week.

The group allegedly physically attacked and robbed a man on a CTA train in Chicago, according to Fox News.

Since the Maduro regime took power in Venezuela in 2013, the US estimates that more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the once economically booming South American country.

The Biden administration aimed to remove the sanctions that the Trump administration had placed on Venezuela, claiming that the measures had only made the country's severe humanitarian and economic crises worse.

The deal was struck and the US had deported 1,800 Venezuelans on 15 flights since October, per the Journal.

After the United States reimposed sanctions on Venezuela's gold industry on February 13, Maduro has refused to assist with deportations, making it impossible to remove some of the country's violent criminals who are currently living in the United States.

Nevertheless, just a small portion of the unlawfully entering Venezuelan migrants have been deported by the Biden administration.

ICE data shows that there were 830 Venezuelan encounters at the US border in fiscal year 2023, but that number does not include the gotaways. Border authorities say they came into contact with 335,000 Venezuelan citizens.

Of them, more than 201,000 were detained by Border Patrol officers after entering the country illegally. The remaining ones were dealt with at ports of entry, such as CBP One app paroles into the United States, according to Fox News.