The United States has resumed deportation flights to Venezuela, sending back 147 migrants on Monday in the first such operation since two powerful earthquakes killed more than 6,000 people and severely damaged large parts of the South American country in late June.
The plane departed from Miami and landed at General José Antonio Anzoátegui International Airport in the city of Barcelona, in Anzoátegui state.
According to CNN, authorities chose this airport partly because Simón Bolívar International Airport, where previous deportation flights had arrived, suffered considerable structural damage during the earthquakes.
Last Flight Before Disaster
The deportation flight that immediately preceded Monday's had carried 146 Venezuelans and touched down just hours before the earthquakes struck. Some of the migrants on that flight later died when the hotel where they had been housed collapsed during the tremors.
The twin quakes, both registering above magnitude 7, brought the US deportation programme to a complete halt for weeks.
Before the disaster, the Trump administration had been returning hundreds of Venezuelans every week. In May alone, the month before the earthquakes, 1,746 Venezuelans were deported, according to the ICE Flight Monitor.
165th Flight Since 2025
Monday's flight was recorded as the 165th since early 2025, when Caracas and Washington agreed to restart deportation operations.
Mervin Maldonado, who heads the repatriation programme on the Venezuelan side, welcomed the returning migrants in a social media post, saying they are "returning home, to reunite with their families, to continue their education, to be productive, and to contribute to national development."
CNN said it had contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Venezuela's Path to Recovery
The backdrop to these deportations remains deeply troubled. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that the earthquakes caused economic damage equivalent to 6% of Venezuela's GDP, leaving entire regions of the country in ruin and setting the stage for a recovery expected to span several years.
Many Venezuelans chose to flee their homeland in the first place due to severe economic hardship and political repression under former President Nicolás Maduro. In October last year, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 300,000 Venezuelan migrants, stripping a key legal protection that had shielded them from removal.
Maduro was seized in a US military operation in January, and acting President Delcy Rodríguez has since moved to rebuild ties with Washington, opening Venezuela's oil sector to American investment, releasing some political prisoners, and aligning her government more closely with US regional interests.
