An overflight and landing application submitted Monday by U.S.-based Eastern Airlines requests permission for an arrival Wednesday. The application was made public Tuesday by Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister.
Venezuelans have been steadily deported to their home country this year after Maduro, under pressure from the White House, did away with his long-standing policy of not accepting deportees from the U.S.
Immigrants arrive regularly at the airport outside the capital, Caracas, on flights operated by a U.S. government contractor or Venezuela’s state-owned airline. More than 13,000 immigrants have returned so far this year on the chartered flights, the latest of which arrived Friday.
The flights have continued despite U.S. military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean and off Venezuela's Caribbean coast.
‘Not just Venezuela’
The Trump administration says the strikes are aimed at drug cartels, some of which it claims are controlled by Maduro. Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. would start doing strikes on land soon, though he didn’t specify where and said attacks might occur in countries besides Venezuela, suggesting Colombia could see military strikes.
“You know, the land is much easier, much easier. And we know the routes they take,” Trump said to reporters as he met with his Cabinet at the White House. “We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we’re going to start that very soon too.”
Later, when asked to elaborate, Trump said he was speaking about countries that are manufacturing and selling fentanyl or cocaine. The president said he heard that Colombia is manufacturing cocaine and selling it to the U.S.
“Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack,” Trump said.
He added a few moments later, “Not just Venezuela.”
Colombia is indeed the world’s top cocaine producer. Its president, Gustavo Petro, rejected Trump’s assertion that any country that produces drugs bound for the U.S. could be hit with U.S. strikes. Petro also warned Trump that any attack on Colombia would be perceived as a “declaration of war.”
“Don’t ruin two centuries of diplomatic relations” Petro wrote in a post on X. “If there is a country that has helped to stop thousands of tons of cocaine from reaching American consumers, it is Colombia.”
Pope Leo XVI calls for dialogue
As tensions continue to escalate, Pope Leo XVI on Tuesday called for the U.S. to pursue dialogue and even economic pressure on Venezuela, rather than threats of military action, to achieve its goals.
Leo, history’s first American pope, told reporters aboard the papal plane returning from Lebanon that the Venezuelan bishops conference and the Vatican Embassy in Caracas were trying to calm the situation and look out for the plight of ordinary Venezuelans.
“The voices coming from the United States change, with a certain frequency at times,” he said. “On the one hand, it seems there was telephone conversation between the two presidents, on the other, there’s this danger, this possibility of an activity, an operation including invading the territory of Venezuela.”
He stressed that he didn’t have further information. “Again I believe it’s better to look for ways of dialogue, perhaps pressure -- including economic pressure -- but looking for other ways to change, if that’s what the United States wants to do.”
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2013, when Maduro became president and the nation's oil-dependent economy spiraled from a combination of corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude prices. Most immigrants have settled in Latin American and Caribbean countries, but pandemic-induced job losses prompted many to move to the U.S.
The U.S. began targeting Venezuelan officials with economic sanctions in 2015, but under the first Trump administration, those were expanded significantly, freezing all government assets, blocking Venezuela’s access to U.S. financial markets and prohibiting U.S. individuals and entities from engaging in transactions with Maduro's government.
The economic pressure did not meet the goal of toppling Maduro, whose government found ways to skirt sanctions and eventually earned concessions from the U.S. after promising to work with his opponents to achieve free and fair conditions for a 2024 presidential election. Maduro, however, claimed victory in that contest despite credible evidence to the contrary.
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Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield aboard the papal plane, Manuel Rueda in Bogota, Colombia, and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.