Everyone knows how much the Trump administration and the U.S. media loves the Venezuelan people. Not a day goes by without the administration and at least one major media outlet professing how much they want to help poor Venezuelans — who, it’s worth noting, are being starved by American sanctions — with “humanitarian aid.”
The only problem is that anyone with a functioning brain — and that category excludes most journalists — knows that any “aid” the U.S. ii offering Venezuela is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing, illegal “regime change operation” to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro.
What’s also interesting, and what I learned during a recent trip to Miami, is the fate of many Venezuelans who come to the U.S. to seek a better life. The short answer: They get detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), their asylum pleas are denied and they are deported.
You wouldn’t know this from reading the U.S. press. I did a Google search for “Venezuelans Miami Detentions” and this is what I found.
Yep, those are the top Google hits. First, the tale of Cody Weddle, an American journalist arriving in Miami after being detained in Venezuela — for a few hours.
than how brave and special they are.
Second, a Miami Herald tweet about a “detained” but freed Venezuelan dirtbag named Leopoldo Lopez, who openly supports a U.S. overthrow of the Maduro government. Third, a story about the detention of an aide to Juan Guaido, the U.S. puppet who not long ago announced a comically inept, failed coup dreamed up by Trump administration knuckleheads John Bolton and Elliott Abrams.
What’s barely being covered is what various immigration activists in Miami told me when I was in the city. While the Trump administration is effectively encouraging Venezuelans to come to the United States by seeking to overthrow its government, ICE is picking up Venezuelan nationals off the streets in disproportionately high numbers. Their requests for asylum are being overwhelmingly rejected and ICE is deporting them back home to live in miserable conditions which to a large degree result from U.S. sanctions.
Meanwhile, you have the incredible hypocrisy of a U.S. press establishment that lauds rich, crooked right-wing Venezuelan leaders like Lopez and Guaido cheering on the Trump administration’s “fight for Venezuelan freedom” failing to report on the plight of poor Venezuelans who have come to Florida. Instead, I found a May 2018 Washington Post story, “As Trump tightens asylum rules, thousands of Venezuelans find a warm welcome in Miami.”
I did find one interesting story — filed last October by Stateline — that noted the hypocrisy at play. Here’s an excerpt from the story, which was headlined “Venezuelan Immigrants Get Trump Sympathy but Not Status”:
Venezuelans have been flooding into the United States as their home country faces a severe economic and political crisis.
Immigration from Venezuela increased by 21 percent or almost 61,000 people between 2016 and 2017, the largest significant increase in immigrants from one country that year, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Florida, Texas, California, New Jersey and Georgia got the lion’s share of new Venezuelans, and earlier waves of Venezuelan immigrants are organizing to help them. Nationally the Venezuelan immigrant population has nearly doubled since 2010 to more than 350,000, according to census figures.
Although the Trump administration has criticized the Venezuelan regime and expressed support for its citizens, the administration has so far refused to grant legal status to immigrants fleeing to Florida, Texas and other states.
I’ve stated on numerous occasions that I do not like President Maduro, who increasingly resembles Fidel Castro during his latter years, and would prefer that he was replaced in elections by a younger, progressive socialist. But I am against U.S. sponsored regime change and as much as I dislike Maduro, he’s preferable to the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition and, by any reasonable standard, far more honorable than Trump.
Maduro is also not locking up and killing — as U.S. sanctions do — Venezuelans on anything remotely comparable to what Trump is. I don’t know what current figures are, but immigration advocates say ICE is rounding up and deporting Venezuelans in rapidly growing numbers. A June 2018 Miami Herald story titled — what else? — Trump is deporting Venezuelans to dictator Nicolas Maduro’s hell — said “Venezuelan deportations have surged 36 percent in the last year, from 182 deportees in 2016 to 248 in 2017…Between January and April 2018, 150 have been deported. “
But for the most part, the plight of Venezuelans is no concern of the U.S. press. To merit reporters’ attention, you must be a rich Venezuelan backing the Trump administration’s regime change operation or a U.S. journalist “detained” for two hours before returning to a hero’s welcome. If you’re a poor Venezuelan, no matter what your politics, you won’t get tears from U.S. reporters, you’ll get deported by Donald Trump.
