Venezuela’s government has agreed to the return of illegal migrants from the United States, President Donald Trump said in a Saturday message on Truth Social.

“It is so good to have the Venezuela Hostages back home and, very important to note, that Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua,” he wrote. ”

“Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back,” Trump added. He posted the message after a deputy negotiated the release of six jailed Americans and flew them home.

But the deal seems to only cover Venezuelan gangsters, such as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, according to comments posted Saturday by The Washington Post.

Mauricio Claver Carone, the State Department’s special envoy for Latin America, said Friday that there would be no deal.
“This is not a negotiation,” he told reporters. “The Venezuelan criminals of Tren de Agua and other groups have to be deported and Venezuela has to accept them. It is their responsibility … it is not negotiable. … And if they don’t comply with these requirements, obviously, as President Trump himself has said, there will be major consequences.”

Millions of Venezuelans have fled from their home country since a Cuban-backed takeover and subsequent economic collapse. Most migrated to South American countries, but after 2020, roughly 900,000 accepted the invitation from President Joe Biden to settle in Americans’ communities. Many migrants were killed by Biden’s invitation while trekking from South America to the United States.

Some of the Venezuelans may want to return home, but many will file for asylum and hire lawyers to keep them in Americans’ communities.

Biden’s invitation has been valuable to Venezuela’s dictatorship because it drained the civic pressure for an uprising against Venezuela’s dictator.

The invitation also helped the dictatorship by delivering several billion dollars in remittances from working migrants to their left-behind families. In 2022, “remittances reached US$4.2 billion in 2022 and are now received by an estimated 29 percent of Venezuelan households,” according to “The Dialogue,” which tracks remittances.

Venezuela’s government is nationalist and likely would prefer the return of Venezuelans.

But it is unclear why the dictatorship would agree to help simultaneously Trump, reduce its inflow of remittances, and accept the return of a few thousand criminals plus one million potential rebels — including many skilled, white-collar experts — who have been living in the United States democracy for several years.

“I don’t necessarily trust this” claim, one pro-migration advocate declared on the Bluesky.social network.

“Trump hasn’t been truthful about deals like this in the past and I would strongly suspect that there are very significant restrictions involved,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer who gains money and status whenever the U.S. government disadvantages ordinary Americans by extracting low-wage workers, apartment-sharing renters, and government-aided consumers from poor countries.

However, that policy of Extraction Migration generates vast wealth for Wall Street and its supporters.

The return of the Venezuelans would be great for ordinary Americans because it would nudge up wages, reduce housing costs, and help resolve the immigration debate that has allowed the D.C. elite not to grapple with many economic and civic problems.