Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil demanded on Wednesday that the international community “put on their pants” and act to “free” the Venezuelan illegal migrants detained in El Salvador.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and other members of his authoritarian regime have repeatedly accused the United States of “kidnapping” 238 Venezuelan illegal migrants suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization who were deported to El Salvador in March.
According to the Maduro regime, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act that President Donald Trump invoked to deport illegal migrants is an “anachronistic law” that violates human rights and its use is comparable to “slavery” and “Nazi concentration camps.”
Gil issued his demands during at the “Great Anti-Imperialist March in Defense of Migrants,” a rally organized on Wednesday by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in the capital city of Caracas.
The event saw Venezuelan socialists demand the “immediate liberation” of the Venezuelan deportees detained in El Salvador and shout slogans such as “being a migrant is not a crime, kidnapping is” and chants against Presidents Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele.
“Here are the people of Caracas, here are the people of Venezuela, and they are telling the international system to put on its pants and come to the defense of the 238 Venezuelans who are today kidnapped in El Salvador,” Gil said. “It is time for the international system, for the United Nations system to assume its role with courage, without cowardice, without double standards and ask for the immediate restitution of the freedom of these compatriots, who are going to be looked for by our airplanes, sanctioned by the way, and who are going to take to the skies and look for them and bring them back to their homeland.”
🚨 #AHORA | Canciller Yván Gil: "Le decimos al sistema internacional que se ponga los pantalones y salga en defensa de los 238 migrantes venezolanos que hoy están secuestrados en El Salvador (...) Es hora de que asuman su papel con valentía, sin cobardía, sin dobles raseros, y… pic.twitter.com/frN2xixc58
— El Cooperante (@El_Cooperante) April 2, 2025
Maduro himself vowed days after the deportation took place that neither he nor his regime would “rest” until all the “kidnapped” migrants are “rescued” from El Salvador. Maduro has offered no plan to “rescue” them in public since. Gil echoed Maduro’s promise to “rescue” the detained migrants during his Wednesday speech.
“Why do they [the United States] call themselves defenders of human rights if they are not capable of defending the most elementary thing which is the freedom of compatriots who are vilely kidnapped?” Gil asked, adding that the Maduro regime “will not rest for a minute until each one of those compatriots returns to their homeland, free and sovereign.”
Tuesday’s rally was part of PSUV’s “Anti-Imperialist Peace Agenda: April, Rescue and Freedom,” a series of events that the socialist regime plans to hold throughout April to demand that the United States and El Salvador release the “kidnapped” migrants.
During the event, Nahum Fernández, head of government of the Capital District of Venezuela and PSUV’s Vice President of Mobilization and Events, compared the detention of the Venezuelan deportees in El Salvador to the persecution of Jews during Nazi Germany.
“They have tried to set up concentration camps, we remember the history of Nazi Germany, of the persecution of the Jewish people, which some capitalist actors of the millionaires’ club are trying to reedit, believing that because they have the money in the world they can dominate, they can murder, kidnap and interfere against the self-determination of the people,” Fernández said.
On two occasions in late March, the Maduro regime denounced the United States and El Salvador at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, for allegedly “kidnapping” Venezuelan migrants and detaining them in El Salvador.
Gil said at the time that the deportations of Venezuelan migrants are a “flagrant violation of the human rights of innocent men and women, who are accused without evidence and forcibly transferred to concentration camps.”
“Are you going to say anything against this atrocity? We strongly and indignantly denounce the kidnapping of Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. based on the anachronistic Alien Enemies Act of 1798, in order to send them to third countries without their consent and without due process,” Alexander Yánez, the Maduro regime’s top representative at the U.N. in Geneva, said on March 22. “These citizens were arbitrarily detained, subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, and locked up in concentration camps in El Salvador.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
