A 2-year-old girl separated from her parents by deportation arrived on Wednesday in Venezuela, where her mother was deported from the United States — a move that the South American country has repeatedly denounced as a kidnapping.
Maikelys Espinoza arrived at an airport outside the capital, Caracas, along with more than 220 deported migrants.
Footage aired by state television showed Venezuela’s first lady Cilia Flores carrying Maikelys at the airport. Later, Flores was shown handing the girl over to her mother, who had been waiting for her arrival at the presidential palace along with President Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. government had claimed the family separation last month was justified because the girl’s parents allegedly have ties to the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, which President Trump designated a terrorist organization earlier this year.
The toddler’s return has been “a battle every day and today we have a great victory,” Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said at the airport Wednesday, Reuters reported.
The girl’s mother was deported to Venezuela on April 25. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities sent her father to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March under Mr. Trump’s invocation of an 18th-century wartime law to deport hundreds of immigrants.
For years, the government of Maduro had mostly refused the entry of immigrants deported from the U.S. But since Mr. Trump took office this year, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, including some 180 who spent up to 16 days at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been deported to their home country.
Maduro on Wednesday thanked Mr. Trump for the return of the toddler, Agence France-Presse reported. Receiving the little girl at the presidential palace in Caracas, Maduro thanked Mr. Trump for a “profoundly humane act.”
The Trump administration has said the Venezuelans sent to Guantanamo and El Salvador are members of the Tren de Aragua, but has offered little evidence to back up the allegation.
“There have been and will be differences, but it is possible, with God’s blessing, to move forward and resolve many issues,” Maduro said, alluding to the deep divisions between his and Mr. Trump’s governments. “I hope and aspire that very soon we can also rescue Maikelys’ father and the 253 Venezuelans who are in El Salvador.”
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