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Donald Trump’s crisis negotiator has flown to Venezuela to discuss a deal on migrants with its authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, sparking alarm among the country’s embattled opposition.
Richard Grenell, the US president’s envoy for special missions, arrived in Caracas on Friday to press Maduro to potentially accept thousands of Venezuelan deportees “without condition”, according to US officials.
Grenell’s visit comes just before Secretary of State Marco Rubio embarks on his own trip to Latin America aimed at demonstrating renewed US interest in the western hemisphere.
Grenell, a close confidant of Trump’s, made the trip after Venezuela’s authoritarian Maduro signalled his willingness to talk with Trump’s team, sources said. Russia, one of Maduro’s backers, sent a government plane to Caracas that landed 15 minutes before Grenell’s arrival on Friday.
“He is there on a special mission,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the US state department special envoy for Latin America. “President Trump expects Nicolás Maduro to take back all of the Venezuelan criminals and gang members that have been exported to US, and to do so unequivocally and without condition.”
Details of the discussions with Washington remain unclear. But a deal could involve an easing of US sanctions on Venezuela and dropping a US reward offered for Maduro’s capture in return for Caracas taking back thousands of Venezuela migrants from the US, shipping more oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and releasing US nationals held in Caracas.
Maduro, a close ally of Russia and Iran, has been shunned by the West and much of Latin America after claiming victory in a presidential election last July, whose result was widely regarded as fraudulent. The Biden administration and the European parliament recognised the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, as “president-elect”.
Rubio and Claver-Carone are both Cuban-American hawks who have strongly opposed a deal with Maduro in the past. However it is not clear whether their view will prevail with Trump.
Claver-Carone stressed that the US demands were not part of a diplomatic haggle and said Maduro would be pressed to release US “hostages” in the country. “This is not a quid pro quo, this is not a negotiation in exchange for anything. President Trump himself has made very clear, we don’t need Venezuelan oil,” he said.
If Maduro did not heed Grenell’s demands and the proposal he offered, “there will be consequences”, said Claver-Carone, who insisted that the Trump administration remained committed to democratic change in Venezuela.
It is unclear how many US citizens are being held in Venezuela, though officials there have mentioned at least nine in public statements, with most accused by Maduro’s regime of terrorism and coup-plotting.
Grenell tweeted on January 20 that “diplomacy is back”, saying he had held “multiple conversations with Venezuelan officials” and that “talking is a tactic”. He held a private meeting with Maduro’s top political operator Jorge Rodríguez in Mexico in 2020 in the final days of the first Trump administration.
González this week urged Trump not to cut a deal with Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition has been alarmed by meetings it held with him before Grenell travelled to Caracas.
“Grenell’s nonchalance and lack of concern for democracy and human rights has left everyone very concerned,” said an opposition source. The opposition fears that business interests will lobby Trump to cut a deal giving the US more access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s biggest.
Trump’s own position on Venezuela is unclear. He has said little about the country during the election campaign or since taking office, beyond accusing Maduro of ruining the country and saying on January 20 that “we don’t have to buy their oil” — remarks interpreted by some as a negotiating tactic to put pressure on Maduro.
A former official who worked in Trump’s first administration said the US president was mainly concerned about migration. “He’s just revoked temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelan (migrants) in the US and there are easily twice that number there illegally,” the former official said. “Trump has got to get rid of them all from the US.”
During the first Trump administration, the president imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Maduro’s government and recognised then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president. But the strategy failed to dislodge Maduro, who remained in power with the help of Russia, China and Iran, while Guaidó eventually fled to Florida.
“Trump regards the opposition as losers,” the former official said. “He gave them a lot and they failed. There is no way he is going back down that road again.”
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