The Trump administration has had its first contact with Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela to advance the release of American hostages and ensure the repatriation of “criminals and gang members in a clear and unconditional manner.” The meeting took place just before U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first trip to Latin America, marking his first international tour.

Rick Grenell, Trump’s Special Envoy for Foreign Affairs, traveled to Venezuela to meet with Maduro and discuss the release of American hostages and the deportation of Venezuelans. This marks the first face-to-face encounter between the new U.S. government and the Chavismo regime, which may begin to shape the future of bilateral relations and whether the Trump administration plans to deploy a strategy aimed at seeking regime change in the Caribbean nation.

“We want to do something with Venezuela. I’ve been a big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro. They’ve treated us badly, and they’ve treated the Venezuelan people very badly,” Trump said in a statement in the Oval Office.

“From migration to security and trade, no other region in the world affects the daily lives of Americans more than the Western Hemisphere, and that’s why, under President Trump’s golden era, he has prioritized the Americas in this administration,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, Special Envoy for Latin America, in a call with journalists, confirming Grenell’s meeting in Caracas.

Florida Democrats in Congress criticized the Trump administration on Friday for reversing an 18-month extension of a federal program that protects over half a million Venezuelans from deportation. They urged officials to reinstate these protections for individuals from the South American nation.

In a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the group of lawmakers stated that “sending Venezuelan immigrants back to a dictatorship that engages in torture, extrajudicial killings, and systematic human rights abuses would be a death sentence for many of our friends and neighbors.”

“This decision will have a devastating impact on more than 505,400 Venezuelans who currently rely on protected status,” the lawmakers wrote. “It will also severely affect the communities where they live, work, and pay taxes.”

The letter, led by Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Broward County and Darren Soto of Osceola County, follows Noem’s decision to cancel the program’s extension from April 2025 to October 2026. The extension had been announced by former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas just days before Biden left the White House. Noem argued that the decision should be left to the Trump administration.

The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, compared on Wednesday the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States with the sending of tens of thousands of people to concentration camps in Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany.

“From the episode with Trump (…) there are a series of lessons that must be learned, from them and from us. From them, I suppose, they don’t have to get handcuffs from people who want to get out of their own country,” the president said.

And he added that “There will be a political discussion there, for example, if they are not repeating the same mistake of the Germans in 1943 because they used trains and railways to carry entire wagons full of Jews, socialists and communists to the concentration camp.”

The crisis began after Petro disallowed, through a message on the social network X and not through diplomatic channels, the entry into the country of two planes sent by the United States with deported Colombians, claiming that, by coming handcuffed, they were not receiving “dignified treatment.”

In response to that refusal, Trump ordered the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Colombian products, in addition to other travel and immigration sanctions, and Petro responded with a similar measure, which caused panic throughout the country since the US is Colombia’s main trading partner and strategic ally in political and security matters.

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For that reason, between yesterday and today, three flights of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) have already arrived in Bogotá, bringing 306 Colombians, of which, according to Petro this Wednesday, 42 are minors.

“Where here is Mr. Trump going to tell 42 Colombian children that they are criminals?” the president wondered.

He added: “In the same way he told 42 children, he will tell hundreds of thousands, who are criminals, that’s what they thought in 1943.”

The president also said that in the United States “everyone who is Latin American, indigenous, black, will be treated as a criminal.”

“It’s called collectivizing crime, it was invented by (Adolf) Hitler,” he concluded.

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Petro also assured on Wednesday that his country will have difficulties in its foreign relations due to global changes that, he said, lead to the emergence of “monsters”.

“In the case of Colombia’s foreign relations, we see neither more nor less that what there will be are difficulties. It is a world that enters a phase of profound changes,” said the president when taking office to his new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laura Sarabia.

Pointing out that the world is in a phase of change, Petro quoted the Italian philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci to say that while the new does not fully appear or the old is extinguished, “the monsters appear.”

“And monsters is what we are going to have, hopefully not within Colombian society but I’m afraid so are you too,” he said.

Petro assured that those who fight “for a better world” must “put on their boots” and form “an army of life, a united humanity, a united Latin America, a group that knows how to defend democracy and freedom.”

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At that point he referred to Sarabia, his right hand, and who at 30 years of age is the youngest chancellor that Colombia has ever had, to indicate that she has to carry the voice of the country in that fight.