The crisis was ignited by the president’s open border policies and worsened when his administration announced a special parole program for Venezuelan nationals which allows them to enter the U.S. without a visa and even with expired passports. Once in the country, they are eligible under the plan to apply for work authorization. “Venezuelan illegal immigration to the U.S. is driven as much by policy as economic conditions,” FAIR researchers found. “When the Biden Administration announces tougher enforcement policies, the number of encounters drops. For example, there was a dramatic drop in encounters of Venezuelans in February 2022 when Mexico announced it would no longer allow Venezuelans to enter Mexico visa-free, a policy said to have been made after the Biden Administration requested it.” Another noticeable decrease occurred in October 2022 when the U.S. announced that Venezuelans caught entering the country illegally would be returned to Mexico. Then the Biden administration implemented a new parole program for Venezuelans along with nationals of Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. The administration said it was for those seeking safe haven within the United States due to the conditions in their country.
Now the U.S. has hundreds of thousands of migrants from a nation with documented terrorist ties. Venezuela’s government issues travel documents to individuals linked to terrorism and allows terrorists to operate with relative impunity. The country also has close ties with Iran and other notorious state sponsors of terrorism. A State Department report reveals that Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro and his associates “use criminal activities to help maintain their illegitimate hold on power, fostering a permissive environment for known terrorist groups.” That includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-D), the Colombian-origin National Liberation Army (ELN), and Hizballah sympathizers. In a separate assessment the State Department writes that Maduro has defined himself through his opposition to the United States, regularly criticizing the U.S. government, its policies, and its relations with Latin America. The document also says Maduro’s policies are characterized by authoritarianism, intolerance for dissent, and irresponsible state intervention in the economy.
A few years ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Maduro and more than a dozen current and former Venezuelan government officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other crimes for operating a sophisticated enterprise known as Cártel de Los Soles that has flooded the U.S. with tons of cocaine. Weeks later the DOJ indicted a Maduro ally and onetime member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, a Syrian-Venezuelan citizen named Adel El Zebayar, for distributing cocaine and weapons in coordination with terrorist organizations and recruiting terrorists to join the Cártel de Los Soles to plan and carry out attacks in the U.S. The feds say El Zebayar obtained a cargo planeload of military-grade weaponry from the Middle East. With these documented ties to terrorism, the FAIR report logically points out that Venezuelan mass illegal immigration raises the specter of terrorist infiltration.