Venezuela's Maduro wants his thugs back

By Monica Showalter

It's almost like he lost a division.

Venezuela's socialist dictator, Nicolas Maduro, has stepped forward with a bizarre mixture of rage and crocodile tears, whimpering about all theVenezuelan criminals shipped by the U.S. to El Salvador this weekend for a stretch in President Nayyib Bukele's famously strict prisons.

According to CNN:

Venezuela’s leader has described the deportation of more than 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants sent by the United States to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador as a “kidnapping,” and denied they are criminals while backing calls for their return.

“Nayib Bukele should not be an accomplice to this kidnapping, because our boys did not commit any crime in the United States, none,” Nicolas Maduro told supporters Wednesday, referencing El Salvador’s leader, who has struck a deal with US President Donald Trump.

“They were not brought to trial, they were not given the right to a defense, the right to due process, they were deceived, handcuffed, put on a plane, kidnapped, and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador,” Maduro added.

It's as good an argument as any I've ever seen that President Trump was right in invoking the Alien Enemy Act in deporting the Venezuelan illegals involved with Tren de Aragua gang from the U.S.

Maduro is suddenly insisting that he wants these people back in Venezuela -- after emptying his prisons of them and telling them to head to el norte.

Crazier still, the prisoners were sent to El Salvador precisely because Maduro refused to take a repatriation flight of them to Venezuela.

He didn't want them back earlier, but now he wants them back now? He's offering to send migrant "dignity" flights, borrowing from the language of the pope, when just yesterday, he didn't want them back inside his country?

Too late, it was off to San Salvador for them as a result of that decision, where they are sure to cause no problems to anyone, such is the security of the prisons there.

Sound like there might have been a mission all along? Sound like he lost his army sent to loot and pillage the hated gringo?

Well, it does to me.

Note how he denies that any of them are criminals, which he would very cynically know is not true. Maduro knows exactly who he sent to the U.S. to wreak havoc -- which his mentor, Hugo Chavez, openly spoke of when he was alive -- and now that he finds them in El Salvador's fearsome prison out of the reach of anyone, whether Venezuelan or U.S. American, he's out an army.

Of course there was a plan -- and it's been thwarted, badly, by President Trump and President Bukele.

It's very well known that Maduro, drugs, and Tren de Aragua are closely connected and work in sync as Chavista thug enforcers.

Here's a very good history (you have to hit Google translate, but it's worth it) on the intertwined involvement between Maduro and the Tren de Aragua criminal organization:

🔵 Primer informe

EL TREN DE ARAGUA: Su origen

En la actualidad, el Tren de Aragua, una peligrosa banda asociada al chavismo, es un tema recurrente y ampliamente mencionado. Sin embargo, pocos conocen su verdadero origen y la relación directa que mantiene con el chavismo y sus… pic.twitter.com/KRcjP9eHyA
— Yo soy tu Pedro (@pedr0estrada) March 18, 2025

CNN has a decent backgrounder here.

Now he's pretending he's cared about the migrants all along, despite driving them from his country. Sure, he's probably trying to score points with Democrats, who are making similar arguments to allow Tren de Aragua's thugs to stay in the states -- raising questions about their involvement with him. But more likely, he's most upset about his "poor man's weapon" of illegal immigration to inflict harm on the U.S.

Trump got rid of it, and since he didn't welcome them back, they're out of circulation now. The only thing this really suggests is that Trump was right about the Alien Enemies Act and Maduro's been caught with his pants down.

Image: Grok, AI-generated picture