Border czar–designee Tom Homan is clearly the right guy to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitious deportation plans. But there’s one obstacle that’s out of his control.
What to do with all the Venezuelans he’s going to arrest?
Venezuela isn’t going to want them back. It’s on ICE’s list of uncooperative countries when it comes to deportation, along with Cuba, Iran, Russia, China, etc. The usual tool we’d use to force compliance is visa sanctions, as is spelled out in 8 USC 1253(d):
The Secretary of State shall order consular officers in that foreign country to discontinue granting immigrant visas or nonimmigrant visas, or both, to citizens, subjects, nationals, and residents of that country until the Attorney General notifies the Secretary that the country has accepted the alien.
But we closed our embassy in Caracas in 2019, so we’re not issuing any visas to anybody there. (Though, incredibly, the embassy website still advertises Biden’s illegal parole program for Venezuelans and others without visas to fly over the border directly to the interior of the U.S., which they do from other, safe countries.)
What’s more, flights from the U.S. to Venezuela are suspended, so we couldn’t fly them there in any case.
This is a real problem because, as ICE reported in its fiscal year 2024 report this week, it has about 1,500 Venezuelans in custody with final deportation orders and 700,000 on its non-detained docket — illegals whom Biden released into the country but who aren’t in ICE custody. This includes the Tren de Aragua gang members, once just taking over apartment complexes in Colorado (but only a handful!) who have now metastasized to 17 states.
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