Exclusive | Venezuelan deportation flights to start as soon as next week: source

Deportation flights to Venezuela are expected to restart as early as next week, a senior ICE official told The Post.The Trump administration is “reasonably confident” the flights will commence “early next week,” said the source.“I have a feeling that we’re going to be able to remove a lot more people a lot more quickly,” the source added.President Trump recently announced that Venezuela has agreed to take back their citizens — including Tren de Aragua gangbangers — after the country blocked them for nearly a year.“We are in the process of removing record numbers of illegal aliens from all countries, and all countries have agreed to accept these illegal aliens back,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.“Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S., including gang members of Tren de Aragua.”The flight deal followed a recent meeting between US envoy Richard Grenell and Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro — with Grenell bringing back six American citizens who had been held by the regime.Grenell also signaled that no concessions were made to the Venezuelan dictator.“The only award for Maduro was my physical presence, the first senior US official to visit the country in years,” Grenell told the Washington Post over the weekend.“It was a big gift to him to have a visit by an envoy of President Trump.”The Maduro regime has blocked deportation flights for about a year after the Biden administration reimposed sanctions on Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

The feds were sending between six and seven thousand people a month back to Venezuela, statistics showed.The new deal marks a massive victory for the Trump administration in its push to carry out a historic mass deportation effort across the US that has already yielded nearly 200 arrests of Tren de Aragua gangbangers.Tren de Aragua’s presence has expanded across the US within a fe...