On 14 May 2025, a Venezuelan two-year-old was triumphantly reunited with her family in Caracas. Stranded alone in the US care system for a year, Maikelys Espinoza Bernal had become a cause célebre in Venezuela, with hundreds of thousands of people mobilised on International Workers’ Day on 1 May, demanding ‘SOS Free Maikelys’.
In May 2024, Maikelys was separated from her parents at the US border, placed in foster care and moved around shelters whilst her parents were held in separate immigration prisons. Despite neither parent possessing a criminal record, both were accused of belonging to the ‘Tren de Aragua’ criminal gang on the basis of their tattoos. In April 2025 her mother, Yorely Bernal was deported to Venezuela. Her father Maiker Espinoza Escalona had already been sent to the notorious CECOT ‘Terrorism confinement’ mega prison in El Salvador. Maikelys was left behind. The Venezuelan government launched an international campaign for her repatriation with President Nicolas Maduro declaring: ‘Taking a child from her mother’s arms simply because she is a migrant, and accusing her of being a member of a criminal gang without evidence, is a crime under any international law.’
On 14 May, Maikelys was finally repatriated on a plane sent by the Venezuelan government to rescue its citizens from incarceration in US immigration prisons. Crowds cheered as the child was carried through Simon Bolivar International Airport by First Lady Cilia Flores and returned to the waiting arms of her mother. However, her father remains in CECOT alongside at least 252 other Venezuelans whilst thousands more are trapped in the US immigration prison system.
The forced separation of over 4,000 migrant children kept in cages at the US border hit the headlines in 2018 under the first Trump administration. As many as 1,360 children remain separated from their parents six years later. The practice of forcibly placing migrant children in foster care quietly continued throughout the Biden administration with approximately 300 children, including Venezuelans and Russians, separated from their families each year.
Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has ramped up repression against Venezuelan migrants, announcing the withdrawal of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and parole programme which offered preferential immigration protection once over the border. This is a change of tack. The US had previously encouraged irregular migration by:
- applying asphyxiating sanctions which decimated the economy, driving young people to leave the country;
- suspending the operation of consular services in Venezuela, effectively blocking visas.
This enticed migrants to instead undertake dangerous journeys through rainforests, rivers and deserts. Around seven million migrated between 2016 and 2023 as Venezuela battled hyperinflation and scarcity, the result of US economic warfare.
No longer held up as ‘political refugees’, these economic migrants are now caught up in Trump’s showboating deportation drive. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have expanded the number of people detained in immigration facilities to 66,000, deporting more than 65,000 since January. At least seven people have died in ICE custody this year, penned in overcrowded cages with insufficient medical attention.
The criminalisation of Venezuelan migrants provides the pretext for further US intervention against the Bolivarian Revolution. ‘Tren de Aragua’ was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation in February 2025. Trump claims the gang has ‘invaded’ the US under the direction of President Maduro in order to destabilise the US. Accordingly, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies act which permits the deportation or detention of migrants without due process if their home country is at war with the US or has committed a ‘predatory incursion.’ It was last used during World War II to imprison 110,000 Japanese people in the US. Thousands of Venezuelans have been racially profiled, accused of belonging to this ‘terrorist’ organisation on the basis of common tattoos such as dice, crowns, tigers and roses.
The mass deportations have been at the centre of a legal battle. As the first plane of Venezuelans left for El Salvador, a federal judge questioned the legality of using the Alien Enemies Act, halting further deportations through this method. The High Court backed this ruling. However, in May the Supreme Court backed the termination of TPS for Venezuelans, green-lighting pushbacks over the Mexican border and mass incarceration.
Tren de Aragua is a powerful narco-trafficking criminal gang that had taken over Tocoron prison in Venezuela, however it was subjected to a major raid by the Venezuelan government in 2023 and largely dismantled, though its leader, Hector Guerrero Flores, escaped. A leaked report from the US National Intelligence Council categorically denied any connection between the Venezuelan government and the gang, exposing the baseless use of the Alien Enemies Act to target Venezuelan migrants.
Regardless, the US struck a $6m deal with El Salvador’s President Bukele, a close ally, who turned the newly-built CECOT ‘Terrorism Confinement Center’ into a concentration camp for migrants. Images of hundreds of young men with shaven heads, handcuffed and shackled, have gone viral. According to Cristosal, a church-based human rights organisation based in El Salvador, of the 252 Venezuelan migrants being held in CECOT, 87% have no criminal record and 55% have ongoing immigration cases. Cristosal report ‘starvation diets’ with inmates denied food, water and essential medical care. Trump has also used the US’s very own offshore torture camp, the occupied Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, sending 177 Venezuelans there in February. After holding the men for 15 days, the US deported them to Honduras where Venezuela sent a repatriation plane through the ‘Return to the Homeland plan’ which organises free flights across Latin America for stranded migrants wanting to return home. Since 2023, around 920,000 have accessed this programme. Rescuing immigration detainees has now become a national imperative; since January 2025 over 4,000 have returned voluntarily and have been provided with housing and socio-economic support on arrival by the Venezuelan government.
Sam McGill
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
