A toddler who was separated from her parents after they crossed the US-Mexico border together a year ago — and who stayed in the United States after her parents were deported — was returned to her home country Venezuela on a removal flight on Wednesday.
Major figures in Venezuela’s socialist government, which is under extensive US sanctions, had repeatedly called for Maikelys Espinoza Bernal, aged two, to be returned to her mother, Yorely Bernal, who was deported to Venezuela in April.
‘Great Victory’
Images on state television showed First Lady Cilia Flores holding the child in her arms at the international airport near Caracas. She was later reunited with her mother and maternal grandmother at the presidential palace, in the company of President Nicolas Maduro.
The toddler’s return has been “a battle every day and today we have a great victory,” said Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello at the airport.
The baby’s father, Maiker Espinoza, 25, was sent to CECOT, the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent at least 137 Venezuelans under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, in March.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in late April that Espinoza is a “lieutenant” in Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang. They said he oversees “homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house,” though they provided no evidence.
Espinoza’s family roundly denied the claim to Reuters.
Cover Up
“At no time has my son been involved with them,” his mother, Maria Escalona, told Reuters this month. “I think this is political – they are using the case of my son to cover up the horror that is being committed against all these innocents.”
DHS said the child’s mother Bernal recruited young women for drug smuggling and sex work, though it also provided no evidence. The family has also denied the claim.
The couple met while living as migrants in Peru, where their daughter was born, Espinoza’s mother Escalona said, adding they were in migrant detention during their entire stay in the United States after turning themselves in at the border.
The toddler has been in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the US since May 2024.
Negotiation?
DHS and the US Department of State did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the girl’s return.
Some political experts in Venezuela speculate it may be tied to the departure from Venezuela of opposition members who had been living in the Argentine diplomatic residence.
The five people, as well as the elderly mother of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, all left the country last week in what the US and the opposition said was a coordinated operation that surprised Caracas.
The Venezuelan government however, has since said the exit of the five, who all had warrants out for their arrests on conspiracy charges that they deny, was agreed in a negotiation. It has not provided more details or any information about the terms of the alleged deal.
Many other families of the men deported to CECOT have denied their loved one had any involvement with Tren de Aragua. Dozens of the men had active asylum cases.
(With inputs from Reuters)
