Two-year-old Maikelys Espinoza Bernal was reunited with her Venezuelan mother following her call for return.
A Venezuelan toddler, separated from his parents after crossing the US-Mexican border, was returned to Venezuela, where his mother was deported in April.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro thanked two-year-old Maykelly’s Espinoza Bernal for returning to his mother, Yory Bernal on Wednesday.
“We must be grateful for all our efforts [Trump special envoy] I would like to thank Rich Grenell for his efforts… and to Donald Trump,” Maduro said, calling the return of the child a “act of justice.”
Both the infant’s parents were criticized by the Trump administration for their involvement in the Trump de Lagua gang.
The father of the child, the 25-year-old maker Espinoza, was among at least 137 Venezuelans sent to a prison in El Salvador in March.
Venezuelan officials are seeking Meikelis’ return, and footage shown on state television shows the first lady, Cilia Flores, embracing Meikelis after arriving at an international airport near the capital of Caracas.
The child was reunited with his mother and grandmother in an incident at the Presidential Palace, where Maduro attended.
The Trump administration called for vague and unfounded claims of Tren de Lagua’s membership in order to send immigrants from El Salvador’s biggest security prison to Secott, El Salvador’s biggest prison, without a legitimate process under the Foreign Enemy Act of 1798.
The 25-year-old maker Espinoza, a father of a toddler, has been criticized by the Trump administration without evidence that he is the “in-air EU” of Tren DeLagua, who runs a home of murder, drug sales, tricks, torture, sex trafficking and torture.
“My son has never been involved with them,” his mother, Maria Escarona, told news agency Reuters this month that she claimed that her son is a member of Tren de Aragua. “I think this is political. They use my son’s case to hide the fears they’re being committed against all these innocent people.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also accused Yorely Bernal of recruiting young women for drug smuggling and sex work, but did not provide evidence of those claims and deported her to Venezuela in April.
The Trump administration has invoked the alien enemy law, a rarely used wartime law that encourages the president to expel people from the country quickly without normal protection, under the pretext that irregular migration to the United States constitutes a foreign “invasion.”
A report by the US Intelligence Reporting Agency found no evidence of public claims by the Trump administration that Tren de Aragua coordinated its activities with the Maduro government as part of a secret attack on the United States.
On Wednesday, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard fired two top members of the Intelligence Reporting Agency, who created the assessment.
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