The crisis in Venezuela resulted in the the largest mass migration in the world in recent history: More than 7.7 million people have left the country since 2014, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The current protests and tensions following Sunday’s elections and the impasse over who was legitimately elected raise questions about whether more Venezuelans will leave the country.
The US recognized opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia as president-elect, based on evidence that the opposition released this weekSecretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday night.
But Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government insists it won, although it has not released all the voting machine results to prove it – something the US and other countries are urging the government to do.
The US State Department, through a spokesperson, Vedant Patel, said this week that “the international community, including the United States, is losing patience waiting for Venezuelan electoral authorities to be honest and publish complete and detailed data about the elections so that “everyone can see the results”.
After 25 years of autocratic government, a significant portion of Venezuelans in the country and in exile had enormous expectations for change.
But the announcement by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) giving Maduro victory could now cement despair and worsen the exodus.
More than 40% of Venezuelans interviewed before the elections said they would consider leaving the country if Maduro remained in power.
“I think we will see days of protests, the regime will try to suppress them or simply wait for them to die down” without addressing the complaints, and then people may see no other option but to leave, Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americas Program from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Axios Latino.
The US has witnessed huge migration shifts due to the crisis in Venezuela: according to a Pew Research Center AnalysisThere were approximately 640,000 Latinos of Venezuelan origin living in the United States — an increase of 592% since 2000.
According to CBP data released in July, From June 2022 to January, an estimated 110,541 Venezuelans arrived legally in the U.S. and were granted parole. In September 2023, there were 242,700 Venezuelans in the US under temporary protected status, or TPS. At that time, this protection was expanded and it was estimated that an additional 472,000 Venezuelan citizens would be eligible.
In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston said more migrants per capita arrived there than any other city last year.
Colorado state officials are already working to determine any possible local impact of the crisis in Venezuela, Denver Human Services spokesman Jon Ewing told Axios reporter Alayna Alvarez on Monday.
If the city sees another increase in migrant arrivals, authorities do not intend to return to the providing several weeks of shelter for newly arrived migrants, Ewing said.
But it’s unclear how many migrants could actually reach U.S. cities like Denver, considering Mexico forcibly stopped the flow of people crossing north and President Joe Biden signed an executive action in June that sharply limits asylum claims.
In the last two months, border crossings are at their lowest level since Biden took office in early 2021.
From migration to US politics
Trump has said several times, including in a campaign email this week, that “countries, especially Venezuela, are exporting their criminals to the United States.”
In May, a Georgia grand jury indicted José Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and is accused of killing and kidnapping Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student.
But, as NBC News reported, a series of studies found that both legal and undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes overall than native-born Americans.
Trump said in a speech in June that Venezuelans “crossed our border claiming they feared for their lives in Venezuela, but, you know, crime in Venezuela went down… because they brought all the criminals here,” a statement he repeated before an audience of millions in National Republican Congress. Convention in Milwaukee.
But what Trump said is false. Although the number of violent deaths in Venezuela fell by close to 25% in 2023 compared to 2021 and 2022, according to data from the Venezuelan Violence Observatorythe decrease is part of a trend observed since 2018 — when Trump was president.
The unprecedented wave of migration in Venezuela and the fact that there are fewer people in the country reduce numbers for “everything,” including death rates from cancer and traffic accidents, according to Ronna Rísquez, co-founder of Victims Monitor, which monitors violence as as well as co-founder of In.Visibleswhich investigates victims of organized crime in Latin America.
As part of this exodus, some criminals emigrated from Venezuela, not only to the US, but to other Latin American countries, said Carlos Nieto, coordinator of the A window to freedom, an organization that defends and promotes the human rights of Venezuelans. But “of those millions who emigrated from Venezuela, criminals are the minority,” he said.
Although authorities arrested 47 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang on North American soil from 2023 to 2024, which contrasts with the fact that last year more than 330,000 Venezuelans crossed the US border.
Furthermore, experts in Venezuela told Noticias Telemundo that there is no evidence of a state policy aimed at sending criminals to other countries. “Here they’re not really releasing prisoners to send them anywhere,” Nieto said.
The Trump campaign also claimed that Kamala Harris is “intentionally importing millions of illegals in hopes of turning them into Democratic voters,” which is also false.
Although Trump has said that Biden and Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration to register newcomers to vote, he has never presented evidence to support his claim. Immigrants who are not citizens cannot vote and there is no evidence of voter fraud perpetrated by migrants who are not citizens.
Jaime Florez, director of Hispanic communications for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, told Noticias Telemundo that “the laws in force must be respected” when asked about immigration measures regarding Venezuelans in the US – such as temporary protected status and humanitarian parole – they propose changing or maintaining. “The campaign does not comment on hypothetical situations,” Florez said, adding that “the Republican National Committee’s statement is identical to that of the Trump campaign.”
Maca Casado, director of Hispanic media for the Harris campaign, said that while she could not predict what a Harris administration foreign policy would do, Biden extended temporary protected status to Venezuelans. “Harris will not abandon Venezuelans, she has not done so in the past,” Casado said, stressing that the administration has “supported the Venezuelan people and asked for voting records” from Sunday’s elections.
In Florida, where there is a large Venezuelan-American population, elected officials from both parties are calling for more U.S. sanctions on Venezuela following disputed election results, with Republicans criticizing the Biden administration’s easing of some sanctions in 2023. But the professor of political science at Florida International University Eduardo Gamarra told Politifact that this ignores the fact that Maduro remained in power in Venezuela despite tougher sanctions from the Trump administration.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
