A Venezuelan toddler who was separated from her parents after they crossed the United States-Mexico border together has been returned to Venezuela, to where her mother was deported in April.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro thanked the administration of United States President Donald Trump for the return on Wednesday of two-year-old Maikelys Espinoza Bernal to her mother, Yorely Bernal.
“We must be thankful for all the efforts, for [Trump special envoy] Rich Grenell for his efforts … and thank Donald Trump, too,” Maduro said, calling the child’s return “an act of justice”.
Both of the toddler’s parents were accused by the Trump administration of involvement with the Tren de Aragua gang, a claim for which the government has offered no evidence and is firmly denied by family members.
The child’s father, 25-year-old Maiker Espinoza, was among at least 137 Venezuelans sent to a prison in El Salvador in March.
Venezuelan officials had sought the return of Maikelys, and footage shown on state television showed First Lady Cilia Flores holding Maikelys after she arrived at an international airport near the capital of Caracas.
The child was reunited with her mother and grandmother in an event at the presidential palace attended by Maduro, who has voiced occasional criticism of Trump’s deportation push but reached an agreement in March to receive Venezuelans deported from the US.
The Trump administration has invoked sometimes vague and unsubstantiated claims of Tren de Aragua membership to send Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, notorious for abusive conditions, without due process under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
The toddler’s father, 25-year-old Maiker Espinoza, has been accused by the Trump administration, without evidence, of being a “lieutenant” in Tren de Aragua who oversees “homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house”.
“At no time has my son been involved with them,” his mother, Maria Escalona, told the news agency Reuters this month, of claims that her son is a member of Tren de Aragua. “I think this is political – they are using the case of my son to cover up the horror that is being committed against all these innocents.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also accused Yorely Bernal of recruiting young women for narcotics smuggling and sex work, but has not provided any evidence for those claims and deported her to Venezuela in April.
The Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used wartime law that grants the president powers to expeditiously expel people from the country without usual protections, under the pretext that irregular migration to the US constitutes a foreign “invasion”.
A report by the US intelligence community found no evidence for public claims by the Trump administration that Tren de Aragua was coordinating activities with the Maduro government as part of a clandestine attack on the United States.
On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired two top members of the intelligence body that authored that assessment.
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