Biden administration is resuming deportation flights for Venezuelan migrants, sources say

The Biden administration is going to resume deporting migrants to Venezuela, two U.S. officials told the Associated Press on Thursday.

The process is expected to begin shortly, the officials said, though they did not provide specific details on when. The officials were not authorized to publicly disclose details of the government’s plan ahead of an official announcement and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The news comes not long after the administration increased protected status for Venezuelans who arrive to the U.S. It reflects the larger strategy by President Biden to not only provide expanded legal pathways for people arriving, but also crack down on those who illegally cross into the country from Mexico.

Venezuela plunged into a political, economic and humanitarian crisis over the last decade, pushing at least 7.3 million people to migrate and making food and other necessities unaffordable for those who remain.

The vast majority who fled settled in neighboring countries in Latin America, but many began coming to the United States in the last three years through the notoriously dangerous Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle in Panama.

It’s the latest effort to deal with swelling numbers of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as the administration comes under increasing pressure from Republicans and mayors from the president’s own party to do more to slow migrant arrivals.

U.S. leaders were in Mexico this week to talk migration. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with his Mexican counterpart, Alicia Bárcena, as well as foreign ministers from Panama and Colombia, on Wednesday. Talks were scheduled to continue Thursday, including a meeting between U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

López Obrador said Thursday during his daily news briefing that Mexico has reiterated in talks its position that there should be investment to spur development in the countries that migrants leave.

“The people don’t abandon their towns because they want to, but rather out of necessity,” the president said. He also criticized the Biden administration’s announcement Wednesday that it waived 26 federal laws in south Texas to allow border wall construction. López Obrador had praised Biden for not building more border wall during his presidency.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is also dealing with a large influx of migrants, was traveling through Latin America to learn more about the paths migrants take to the U.S. and to spread a message about the realities of arriving in his city.

He was scheduled to meet with a nun running a migrant shelter in Mexico City on Thursday morning before heading to the city of Puebla, source of many of the Mexican migrants who arrive in New York, to meet with migrants and community leaders there.

In a news conference late Wednesday night in Mexico City, Adams said he hoped to “manage expectations” of migrants setting out on their journeys, and to inform migrants that his city was “at capacity” after receiving around 120,000 migrants over the last year.

He echoed a rising number of voices in calling for a larger global response to the increasing number of migrants to the U.S.

“It’s not sustainable,” Adams said at the base of a basilica where people often pray before setting out on their journeys. “The message of this not being sustainable cannot stay within the boundaries of New York City. … There is a global migration, and it must have an international response.”

Blinken and other top American officials are visiting Mexico to discuss shared security issues, foremost among them trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, but also arms trafficking and increasing migration.

In August, the U.S. Border Patrol made 181,509 arrests at the Mexican border, up 37% from July but little changed from August 2022 and well below the more than 220,000 in December, according to figures released in September.

The U.S. has tried to get Mexico and countries farther south to do more. In April, the U.S., Panama and Colombia announced a campaign to slow migration through the Darien Gap dividing Colombia and Panama. But migration through the jungle has accelerated and is expected to approach about 500,000 people this year.