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First flight of deported Venezuelan migrants arrives in Caracas, days after Maduro's capture
The flight’s arrival comes 13 days after Maduro was captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, during a military intervention in Venezuela's Caracas.
A flight with 231 Venezuelan migrants deported from the US arrived back in their home country on Friday, nearly two weeks after the US captured the former president, Nicolas Maduro and took him to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
The Eastern Airlines plane arrived from the US city of Phoenix at the airport outside the capital, Caracas, marking the resumption of flights after Washington unilaterally suspended direct deportation air transfers in mid-December, Associated Press reported, citing Venezuelan officials.
The previous direct flight from the US was on December 10.
Return flights for deported migrants had been regularised since late March as part of the transfers agreed upon by both governments.
The transfer of migrants was successively affected amid heightened tensions since US military forces began to execute a series of deadly attacks against boats suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters. These attacks were on vessels that they claim departed from Venezuela.
The flight’s arrival comes 13 days after Maduro was captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, during a military intervention in the Venezuelan city of Caracas. Subsequently, he was transferred to US territory, where they both appeared on January 5 before a New York court to face narcoterrorism charges. Both have pleaded not-guilty, the report said.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe travelled to Venezuela to meet with acting President Delcy Rodriguez, becoming the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit the South American country after the US raid.
The meeting on Thursday lasted two hours, a US government official told AFP. The official said that the meeting was organised on the insistence of President Donald Trump and was meant to demonstrate the desire of the US for a better relationship with Venezuela. It occurred the same day Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump at the White House.
