Tag: Venezuela

What Trump said about Aurora immigrants and gangs at Tuesday’s debate (and what we know)

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Jeraldine Mazo, a resident of Aurora’s Edge at Lowry apartment complex, speaks during a press conference to “set the record straight” on an alleged “gang takeover” of the property. Sept. 4, 2024.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

The presence of a Venezuelan gang in Aurora became a talking point in Tuesday’s presidential debate, with former President Donald Trump once again using the situation to argue for an immigration crackdown.

In his first answer, Trump name checked Aurora, along with an Ohio town with a large Haitian population, claiming that criminal immigrants “are taking over the towns, they are taking over buildings, they are going in violently.”

It was at least the third time in recent weeks that Trump has referred to the presence of Venezuelan gang members in Aurora. It is part of Trump’s consistent portrayal of immigrants as dangerous and violent, though researchers have consistently found no link between immigration and crime.

Trump’s claims about Aurora can be traced to allegations made by the landlord of several apartment buildings; the company claims that Venezuelan gang members have “taken over” its buildings, trying to kick out apartment managers and extort rent payments. The apartments, owned by CBZ Management, are home to hundreds of people, including many new immigrants who were placed there by local nonprofits.

Local officials acknowledge that the gang Tren de Aragua has a presence in the Denver metro area, but claim it is relatively small, and dwarfed by the activities of domestic gangs. Police have acknowledged allegations of rent theft at the affected buildings.

Complaints from residents about criminal activity have also surfaced. Cindy Romero said she captured video of armed men entering an apartment at The Edge at Lowry, which she shared with local media. She told CBS News that she regularly saw people with automatic weapons and witnessed shootouts, with the police offering little help.

However, many residents of the apartments say the talk of gang control is false or exaggerated. At a recent press conference, some said that the video of the armed men was a “one-time” event. And they also said that they were more concerned about their landlord and the mismanagement and neglect of the building.

Apartment residents also said the attention on the situation has made them the subject of death threats and racist rhetoric from outsiders.

Trump previously talked about the Aurora apartments on a podcast and at a speech in Michigan, where he stoked fears of “migrant crime.” Researchers have repeatedly debunked the idea that immigrants — whether or not they are documented — commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans. Other research has found no connection between the number of undocumented residents in a community and its crime rates.

Trump also raised other contested — and sometimes unfounded — claims about immigrants, including that recent immigrants are eating house pets in Ohio. “They are eating cats and they are eating the pets of people that live there,” he said. Officials in Ohio say that’s not happening.

During the debate, Vice President Kamala Harris defended her record on immigration, portraying herself as a prosecutor who has cracked down on trans-national criminal organizations. And she blamed Trump for sinking a bipartisan immigration proposal earlier this year.

“He preferred to run on the problem, instead of fixing it,” she argued.

More on the claims in Aurora

Police officials in Denver and Aurora have linked members of the Tren de Aragua gang to several specific crimes, including an attempted murder at Fitzsimons Place and the robbery of a Denver jewelry store. Aurora police say they’ve arrested 10 people suspected of being Tren de Aragua members in recent weeks.

Officials in Denver and Aurora strongly dispute the idea that the gang has taken control of any part of either city.

Rep. Jason Crow, the Democrat who represents Aurora in Congress, earlier said that the “gang issues are being grossly exaggerated and misrepresented,” arguing that gang activity in the city is “consistent with trends across Colorado” and that violent crime is declining across the metro.

“We have isolated incidents of gang activity that’s being addressed by federal and local law enforcement and the metro gang task force,” he recently said. “They are doing exactly what law enforcement should be doing. And they’re addressing it with focus and with intentions. And I’ve talked to them and I’m confident they are going to continue to do so.”

The flow of immigrants to the Denver metro area dropped dramatically after President Joe Biden enacted new policies limiting asylum claims over the summer — though only after more than 40,000 people arrived in recent years. The issue of recent immigration is likely to dominate not just the presidential election, but also contested Congressional elections in Colorado.

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September 10, 2024
‘I’m living a lie’: On the streets of Aurora, pregnant Venezuelan immigrants struggle to survive
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She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.

Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son Dylan by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets she’d taken from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.

First they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband had collected from begging on the street, they bought a tent.

They waited until dark to construct their new home. They chose a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.

“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”

That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s to keep him warm enough that he could sleep, Ivanni Herrera cried.

Seeking better lives, finding something else

Over the past two years, a record number of families from Venezuela have come to the United States seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling with conflict about how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.

Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some are homeless and gambling on the kindness of strangers to survive. Some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.

Like many in her generation, regardless of nationality, Herrera found inspiration for her life’s ambitions on social media. Back in Ecuador, where she had fled years earlier to escape the economic collapse in her native Venezuela, Herrera and her husband were emboldened by images of families like theirs hiking across the infamous Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama. If all those people could do it, they thought, so can we.

They didn’t know many people who had moved to the United States, but pictures and videos of Venezuelans on Facebook and TikTok showed young, smiling families in nice clothes standing in front of new cars boasting of beautiful new lives. U.S. Border Patrol reports show Herrera and the people who inspired her were part of an unprecedented mass migration of Venezuelans to America. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the southern border since October 2022 — more than in the previous nine years combined.

Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She and her friends had developed another theory: The hype around the U.S. was part of some red de engaño, or network of deception.

After several days of camping on the street and relieving herself outside, Herrera began to itch uncontrollably with an infection. She worried: Would it imperil her baby?

She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.

Days after she was forced to leave the Microtel, Denver paused its policy and allowed homeless immigrants to stay in its shelters through the winter. Denver officials say they visited encampments to urge homeless migrants to come back inside. But they didn’t venture outside the city limits to Aurora.

As Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, on Denver’s eastern edge, is a place where officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.

In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.
- Need a quick explainer? See our 5-minute read on Tren de Aragua in Aurora
The doctors treated Herrera’s yeast infection and urged her to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid, a program that extends the health care benefits for poor American families to unauthorized immigrants for labor and delivery.

Herrera refused.

“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”

Another family, cast out into the night

It was March when David Jaimez, his pregnant wife and their two daughters were evicted from their Aurora apartment. Desperate for help, they dragged their possessions into Thursday evening Bible study at Jesus on Colfax, a church and food pantry inside an old motel. Its namesake and location, Colfax Avenue, has long been a destination for the drug-addicted, homeless veterans and new immigrants.

When the Jaimez family arrived, the prayers paused. The manager addressed the family in elementary Spanish, supplementing with Google Translate on her phone.

After arriving from Venezuela in August and staying in a Denver-sponsored hotel room, they’d moved into an apartment in Aurora. Housing is cheaper in that eastern suburb, but they never found enough work to pay their rent. “I owe $8,000,” Jaimez said, his eyes wide. “Supposedly there’s work here. I don’t believe it.”

Jaimez and his wife are eligible to apply for asylum or for “ Temporary Protected Status ” and, with that, work permits. But doing so would require an attorney or advisor, months of waiting and $500 in fees each.

At the prayer group, Jaimez’s daughters drank sodas and ate tangerines from one participant, a middle-aged woman and Aurora native. She stroked the ponytail of the family’s 8-year-old daughter as the young girl smiled.

When the leader couldn’t find anywhere for the family to stay, they headed out into the evening, pushing their year-old daughter in her stroller and lugging a suitcase behind them. After they left, the middle-aged woman leaned forward in her folding chair and said: “It’s kind of crazy that our city lets them in but does not help our veterans.” Nearby, a man nodded in agreement.

That night, Jaimez and his family found an encampment for migrants run by a Denver nonprofit called All Souls and moved into tent number 28. Volunteers and staff brought in water, meals and other resources. Weeks later, the family was on the move again: Camping without a permit is illegal in Denver, and the city closed down the encampment. All Souls re-established it in six different locations but closed it permanently in May.

At its peak, nearly 100 people were living in the encampment. About half had been evicted from apartments hastily arranged before their shelter time expired, said founder Candice Marley. Twenty-two residents were children and five women were pregnant, including Jaimez’s wife. Marley is trying to get a permit for another encampment, but the permit would only allow people over 18.

“Even though there are lots of kids living on the street, they don’t want them all together in a camp,” Marley said. “That’s not a good public image for them.”

A city’s efforts, not enough

Denver officials say they won’t tolerate children sleeping on the street. “Did you really walk from Venezuela to be homeless in the U.S.? I don’t think so,” said Jon Ewing, spokesman for Denver’s health and human services department. “We can do better than that.”

Still, Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.

Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But in May, on pace to spend $180 million this year helping newcomers, the city scaled back its offer to future migrants while deepening its investment in people already getting help.

Denver paid for longer shelter stays for 800 migrants already in hotels and offered them English classes and help applying for asylum and work permits. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.

Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area, but Marley still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. “It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” she said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”

After the encampment closed, Jaimez and his family moved into a hotel. He paid by holding a cardboard sign at an intersection and begging for money. Their daughter only attended school for one month last year, since they never felt confident that they were settled anywhere more than a few weeks. The family recently moved to a farm outside of the Denver area, where they’ve been told they can live in exchange for working.

On the front lines of begging

When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she was sitting on the grass, resting after a long day asking strangers for money. She waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.

The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.

Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She brought him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.

Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.

To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from something else: standing outside with their children and begging.

Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.

One spring weekday, Herrera and Rodriguez stand by the shopping carts at the entrance to a Mexican grocery store. While their sons crawl along a chain of red shopping carts stacked together and baby Milan sleeps in his stroller, they try to make eye contact with shoppers.

Some ignore them. Others stuff bills in their hands. On a good day, each earns about $50.

It comes easier for Rodriguez, who’s naturally boisterous. “One day a man came up and gave me this iPhone. It’s new,” she says, waving the device in the air.

“Check out this body,” she says as she spins around, laughing and showing off her ample bottom. “I think he likes me.”

Herrera grimaces. She won’t flirt like her friend does. She picks up Milan and notices his diaper is soaked, then returns him to the stroller. She has run out of diapers.

Milan was sick, but Herrera has been afraid to take him to the doctor. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, she was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.

But some days, when she’s feeling overwhelmed, she wants to be deported — as long as she can take her children along. Like the day in May when the security guard at the Mexican grocery store chased off the women and told them they couldn’t beg there anymore. “He insulted us and called us awful names,” Rodriguez says.

The two women now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.

The American Dream, still out of reach

In the garage where Herrera and her family live, the walls are lined with stuffed animals people have given her and her son. Baby Milan, on the floor, pushes himself up to look around. Dylan sleeps in bed.

Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the months-long trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.

“I don’t feel equipped to handle all of this on my own,” she says.

The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”

When her daughter calls in the middle of the day, she’s sure not to answer and only picks up after 6 p.m. “They think I’m doing so well, they expect me to send money,” she says. And Herrera has complied, sending $100 a week to help her sister pay rent and buy food for her daughter.

Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to the U.S., her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.

She has to come clean. She doesn’t have the money. She lives day to day. The American Dream hasn’t happened for Ivanni Herrera — at least, not yet. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.

She texts back:

No.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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September 9, 2024
Venezuela says opposition presidential candidate González has left the country for asylum in Spain

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Former Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the South American country after seeking asylum in Spain, according to a senior Venezuelan official.

The surprise departure by the candidate who Venezuela’s opposition and several foreign governments consider the legitimate winner of July’s presidential race is a serious blow to efforts to unseat President Nicolás Maduro and comes just days after the government ordered his arrest.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said in a message posted on Instagram that González, who has not been seen since the election, had sought refuge in past days at Spain’s embassy in Caracas. She said the government decided to grant González safe passage out of the country to help restore “the country’s political peace and tranquility.”

Neither González nor anyone from Venezuela’s opposition has yet to comment.

González, a 75-year-old former diplomat, was a last minute stand in when opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was banned from running. Previously unknown to most Venezuelans, his campaign nonetheless rapidly ignited the hopes of millions of Venezuelans desperate for change after a decade long economic freefall.

While Maduro was declared the winner of the July vote, most western governments have yet to recognize his victory and are instead demanding that authorities publish a breakdown of votes. Meanwhile, tally sheets collected by opposition volunteers from over two-thirds of the electronic voting machines indicate that González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The tally sheets have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. In previous presidential elections, the National Electoral Council published online the results of each of the more than 30,000 voting machines but the Maduro-controlled panel did not release any data this time, blaming an alleged cyberattack mounted by its opponents from North Macedonia.

State Department confirms a US service member detained in Venezuela.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, sought González’s arrest after he failed to appear three times in connection to a criminal investigation into what it considers an act of electoral sabotage.

Saab told reporters that the voting records the opposition shared online were forged and an attempt to undermine the National Electoral Council.

Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which at the invitation of Maduro’s government observed the election, determined the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility. In a statement critical of the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim to victory, but they said the voting records it published online appear to exhibit all of the original security features.

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September 7, 2024
Aurora won’t close more apartments allegedly affected by Venezuelan gangs (yet)
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Aurora’s Edge at Lowry apartment complex. Sept. 4, 2024.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Last week, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman urged the city to shut down the apartment buildings that have made national headlines over an alleged “Venezuelan gang takeover.”

“I strongly believe that the best course of action is to shut these [buildings] down and make sure that this never happens again,” he posted on Facebook.

He was responding to reports of activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at several apartment buildings, which has become the focus of national media coverage.

He added that the Aurora City Attorney’s Office was preparing to, “request an emergency court order to clear the apartment buildings where Venezuelan gang activity has been occurring by declaring the properties a ‘Criminal Nuisance.’”

But those plans are not moving forward, for now.

Aurora is working with the property owners on other options, local officials said. A spokesperson for Coffman said that closing the buildings is no longer the mayor’s goal.

The proposed closures would have affected hundreds of people living in two buildings owned by CBZ Management: The Edge at Lowry and Whispering Pines Apartments.

A third building, Fitzsimons Place, at 1568 Nome Street, has already been shut down over code violations.

Residents of Aurora’s Edge at Lowry apartment complex, and their supporters, hold signs during a press conference to “set the record straight” on an alleged “gang takeover” of the property. Sept. 4, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

The apparent change of plans comes as Coffman is reportedly negotiating with the landlords at CBZ Management. They’re working on a plan, according to a city spokesperson.

“Due to new communications with the property owners and their attorneys since [last] Friday, there are no immediate plans to go forward with such a request at this time,” wrote Aurora spokesperson Michael Brannen, in a statement this week. “But it remains one of the City’s legal options moving forward, if needed.”

What we know and what we don’t about these apartment complexes and Tren de Aragua

Aurora has arrested 10 suspected Tren de Aragua members for various crimes, including assault and attempted murder. In Denver, one crime has been linked to the gang: the robbery of a family-owned jewelry store.

The city and the landlord have a strained relationship. Coffman has called the owners “slumlords,” while the landlords have accused the city of letting Tren de Aragua “take over” the buildings.
- Everyone’s talking about a Venezuelan gang in Aurora. Here’s what we know — and what we don’t
The city and the landlord have been in a multi-year battle with the city over zoning code and habitability issues — complaints residents have been making for years. That dispute led to the previous shutdown of Fitzsimons Place, forcing families out of nearly 100 units.

There’s another complicating factor: Coffman doesn’t have the power to unilaterally shut down apartments, according to Councilmember Crystal Murillo. She’s the representative of the district in western Aurora that is home to the apartment buildings.

Aurora Police officers march into the recently closed Fitzsimons Place apartments in Aurora to make sure people move out. Aug. 13, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

A shutdown would require support from Council and also work from the City Manager, she said.

Murillo is uncertain how her fellow council members would vote, but she opposes a shutdown. She told Denverite she’s concerned that the apartments are unlivable and that the landlord has abandoned the building — but if the building is closed, residents will have nowhere to go, and many could be left homeless.

“I am concerned that people are still at risk,” Murillo said. “We already know there’s a shortage of affordable units that are livable. And you know, I’m concerned that this false narrative is making that even harder.”

Inside an apartment at Aurora’s Edge at Lowry complex, where residents are protesting their landlords alleged negligence of the property. Sept. 4, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

Community activists rallied on Tuesday to decry the idea of shutting down the apartments, as well as to protest CBZ Management’s alleged poor upkeep of the buildings, as well as to push back on what they described as racist and biased media coverage of their community.

Several Venezuelan immigrants said they can’t find new apartments because landlords don’t want to rent to them — a problem that’s only grown worse with sometimes hyperbolic claims of a gang takeover in Aurora.

The City of Aurora is already embroiled in legal action against Zev Baumgarten, an owner of CBZ. The company has not responded to multiple Denverite requests for comment. Coffman also has not responded to requests for interviews about those negotiations or his desire to shutter the buildings.

Aurora previously shuttered a separate CBZ Management property, displacing hundreds of people

The closure of Fitzsimons Place, at 1568 Nome Street, forced 300 tenants out of 99 units.

The City of Aurora provided those tenants with a few weeks of rent and the possibility of downpayment assistance, but no city workers were on the ground to help tenants on the day of the shutdown. Only nonprofit workers were present.

Weeks after the shutdown, Nate Kassa, an organizer with the East Colfax Community Collective, said organizers are overwhelmed as they try to find new housing for so many people.

Emily Goodman, with the East Colfax Community Collaborative, helps Yubusay Fonseca find a place to go after she and her neighbors were forced to move out of the recently closed Fitzsimons Place apartments in Aurora. Aug. 13, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

Many families from the Nome Street apartments fell through the cracks, and he worries they may be living on the streets, he said. Murillo fears the same would happen to the residents of the other CBZ Management apartments the city has considered shuttering.

Murillo has heard from housing advocates that some landlords are reluctant to rent to people coming from the CBZ buildings, “because now they’re all being labeled incorrectly and falsely as gang members,” she said.

“And so really, the collateral damage are still the residents. They were the victims in the first place. They’re still the victims now. And they’re suffering the consequences and being caught in the crossfire of this political grandstanding that’s happening.”
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September 6, 2024
Dallas Is Latest City Targeted by Venezuelan Gang, Social Media Video Claims

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For the last year the Dallas Police Department has been investigating criminal activity committed by members of a Venezuelan gang in North Dallas, a department spokesperson told the Observer Wednesday. According to the department, several individuals in the North Dallas area are believed to be associated with the Tren de Aragua gang, a Venezuelan criminal organization that has reportedly crept into the United States in recent months. …

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Emma Ruby

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September 4, 2024
What’s behind the U.S. seizure of Nicolás Maduro’s plane

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What’s behind the U.S. seizure of Nicolás Maduro’s plane – CBS News

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The U.S. has seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over alleged sanctions violations. The jet in question has been transported from the Dominican Republic to Florida. CBS News correspondent Cristian Benavides has more from Fort Lauderdale.

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September 2, 2024
U.S. seizes Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s plane

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U.S. seized Nicolas Maduro’s plane, flew it to Fort Lauderdale

U.S. seized Nicolas Maduro’s plane, flew it to Fort Lauderdale

00:19

The U.S. seized a plane belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought it to the U.S. on Monday, the Justice Department said in a statement, claiming the jet was exported from Florida in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The plane, identified as a Dassault Falcon 900EX, was seized in the Dominican Republic and transported to Florida, the department said.

“This morning, the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “The Department will continue to pursue those who violate our sanctions and export controls to prevent them from using American resources to undermine the national security of the United States.”

The department said Maduro’s associates arranged to purchase the jet from a U.S. company in south Florida for $13 million in late 2022 and early 2023. The plane was shipped to the Caribbean and then to Venezuela, the statement said, in violation of U.S. sanctions and export controls.

The Dassault Falcon 900EX belonging to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which the U.S. seized on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024.

CBS Miami

Since then, the jet “has flown almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela and has been used for the benefit of Maduro and his representatives, including to transport Maduro on visits to other countries,” according to the department. Online flight records show a plane with the matching tail number at airports in China, Cuba and Brazil since 2023.

CNN first reported the seizure of Maduro’s plane.

In June, Maduro claimed victory in his presidential reelection campaign, but the U.S. and other countries have said Maduro tampered with the results. Last month, the U.S. recognized Maduro’s opponent, Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González, as the winner, rejecting the Venezuelan government’s declaration that Maduro had won.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council said the U.S. is “working to ensure that the will of the Venezuelan people, as expressed through the July 28 election, is respected,” and called the seizure of the plane “an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela.”

Olivia Gazis and

Robert Legare

contributed to this report.

More from CBS News

Stefan Becket

Stefan Becket is a managing editor of politics for CBSNews.com. Stefan has covered national politics for more than a decade and helps oversee a team covering the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, immigration and federal law enforcement.

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September 2, 2024
Venezuela’s Maduro reshuffles cabinet after contested election victory

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As tensions persist over his widely questioned re-election, Maduro makes major changes, naming new interior and oil ministers.

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has made major changes to his cabinet, as protests continue following his success in a recent election rejected by opponents as fraudulent.

Maduro on Tuesday brought in new figures to lead the oil, finance, and interior ministries, among others.

Anabel Pereira is the new finance minister, while Hector Obregon is the new president of state oil company PDVSA, replacing Pedro Tellechea, who will move to head the Ministry of Industries and National Production, Maduro said on state television.

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez will remain in her post, but add the oil ministry to her brief, Maduro added.

Yvan Gil and Vladimir Padrino will remain in their respective posts as foreign minister and defence minister, Maduro said, while governing party leader Diosdado Cabello will be the new interior, justice and peace minister.

The changes are “a profound renovation of the national government and we are putting together a new team which will help us transition everything for this era, open new paths … speed the changes the people need,” Maduro said during an event broadcast live.

Cabello, a close ally of Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, will return to the cabinet after being the second in command of the governing party PSUV. He is a former vice president and legislator and served as interior and justice minister in the early 2000s.

“Today, I think Venezuela is on the path of definitive peace, a peace with justice, a peace where the people feel that those who have acted against the constitution and the law have justice applied to them on time,” Cabello said.

The changes have come amid long-running tensions in the South American nation, following a July election in which both Maduro and the opposition, which had led him by a nearly insurmountable margin in pre-election polling, claimed victory.

Election observers, opposition members, and regional leaders have all expressed strong scepticism about Maduro’s claims of success, with growing calls for the government to release vote tally data that could help confirm the results.

The opposition has released its own data, tabulated from around the country, purporting to show that it beat Maduro by a 2-1 margin.

The government has led a harsh crackdown on protests and members of the opposition in response, opening an investigation into opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia over his claims that the opposition were the true winners of the election.

Urrutia, who has barely been seen since the elections, has ignored a series of summons to testify as part of that investigation.

Maria Corina Machado, another prominent opposition figure, told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday that street protests and international pressure could push Maduro to step down, but the embattled leader has shown few signs that he is willing to do so.

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August 27, 2024
Trump Suggests He’ll Flee to Venezuela If Harris Wins the Election

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Donald Trump has apparently considered the possibility that he might lose the 2024 election—and, if he does, his plans for the future involve a one-way ticket to Venezuela.

Speaking to Elon Musk on Monday, the former president told the X owner, “If something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela, because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country. So you and I will go and we’ll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela.”

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“Their crime rate is coming down and our crime rate is going through the roof,” Trump continued. “And it’s so simple. And you haven’t seen anything yet, because these people have come into our country and they’re just getting acclimated.” He added that Venezuela has cleared out “about 70% of their really bad people,” suggesting that said “really bad people” are now in the US. “Their jails are about 50%, put into the United States,” he said. “Same with other countries, over 30%. Some are at 50%. They’re all different. But the bottom line is they’re all going to be 100%. Why wouldn’t you put 100% of it?”

Not surprisingly, Trump’s argument that Venezuela—which the State Department warns Americans not to travel to—will be safer than the US under Kamala Harris is, of course, not actually based on facts. For one thing, FBI data shows that violent crime is down significantly in the US. For another, Venezuela is widely considered to be dictatorship, where at least 1,260 people have been arbitrarily detained following last month’s presidential election, with nearly two dozen killed, according to advocacy groups. Meanwhile, Roberto Briceño-León, founder of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told Factcheck.org in June that there was zero evidence that Venezuela is sending its criminals to the US, no matter how many times Trump says it. “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,” he told the outlet.

Elsewhere in Trump’s interview with Musk, the former president vowed, if reelected, to preside over the “largest deportation” in history, and, in a uniquely bizarre moment, said Harris looked like the “most beautiful actress ever to live” on a recent illustrated cover of Time. “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania,” he added.

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Bess Levin

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August 13, 2024
Russia and Venezuela have blocked encrypted messaging app Signal

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Both Russia and Venezuela have blocked access to the encrypted messaging app Signal, .

The Russian news service broke the news about the block on the Signal app in Russia. Russia’s telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor restricted the app due to “violations of the requirements of the Russian legislation whose fulfillment is necessary to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes,” according to the Russian report.

The cybersecurity tracker on Friday that Russia has restricted access to Signal “on most internet providers.” NetBlocks also noted the app “remains usable with ‘censorship circumvention’ enabled” in Signal’s settings echoing to users who’ve been blocked from their messages in both regions .

The blocking of Signal in Venezuela occurred in the long shadow of the country’s disputed presidential election results from the end of July. Venezuela’s electoral authority declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner without publishing any evidence of his win, sparking protests from detractors and supporters of Maduro’s opponent Edmundo González, according to the .

Both regions have been cutting off access to other similar social media apps possibly as a way to quiet dissenting voices. earlier today for a period of 10 days claiming that the company’s owner Elon Musk was inciting hatred and “violated” his social network’s rules. also reported a “mass YouTube outage” in Russia on Thursday.

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Danny Gallagher

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August 9, 2024
Maduro is declared winner in Venezuela’s presidential election

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Venezuela’s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.“The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first remarks.Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming” based on voting tallies it had received from campaign representatives from about 40% of ballot boxes nationwide.The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, earlier said Maduro had secured 51% of the vote to 44% for González. But it didn’t release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours,” hampering the ability to verify the results.Foreign leaders held off recognizing the results.“The Maduro regime should understand that the results it published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile. “We won’t recognize any result that is not verifiable.”U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. has “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” speaking in Tokyo.The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.“This is not the first time that they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he said to a few hundred supporters at the presidential palace. He provided no evidence to back the claim but promised “justice” for those who try to stir violence in Venezuela.Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed González trouncing Maduro. Meanwhile, the head of the electoral council said it would release the official voting acts in the coming hours.Maduro celebrated the result with a few hundreds supporters at the presidential palace.Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from the unlikeliest of opponents in González: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado.Earlier, opposition leaders celebrating, online and outside a few voting centers, what they assured was a landslide victory for González.“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting center in a working class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubled Maduro’s vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.“This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”Voters started lining up at some voting centers across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad should Maduro win another six year term.Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.Sunday’s ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro’s rule.After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.“No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognized.”Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.Economic sanctions from the U.S. seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.Maduro’s pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71% from 2012 to 2020.But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed a family of four for a month — costs an estimated $385.The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn’t materialize. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.___Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.

CARACAS, Venezuela —

Venezuela’s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.

“The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first remarks.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming” based on voting tallies it had received from campaign representatives from about 40% of ballot boxes nationwide.

The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, earlier said Maduro had secured 51% of the vote to 44% for González. But it didn’t release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours,” hampering the ability to verify the results.

Foreign leaders held off recognizing the results.

“The Maduro regime should understand that the results it published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile. “We won’t recognize any result that is not verifiable.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. has “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” speaking in Tokyo.

The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.

When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.

“This is not the first time that they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he said to a few hundred supporters at the presidential palace. He provided no evidence to back the claim but promised “justice” for those who try to stir violence in Venezuela.

Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed González trouncing Maduro. Meanwhile, the head of the electoral council said it would release the official voting acts in the coming hours.

Maduro celebrated the result with a few hundreds supporters at the presidential palace.

Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from the unlikeliest of opponents in González: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado.

Earlier, opposition leaders celebrating, online and outside a few voting centers, what they assured was a landslide victory for González.

“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting center in a working class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubled Maduro’s vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

“This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”

Voters started lining up at some voting centers across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.

The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad should Maduro win another six year term.

Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.

The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.

Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.

Sunday’s ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro’s rule.

After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.

“No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognized.”

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.

Economic sanctions from the U.S. seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.

Maduro’s pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71% from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed a family of four for a month — costs an estimated $385.

The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.

González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn’t materialize. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

___

Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.

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July 29, 2024
Venezuela standoff: Maduro declared winner of presidential election but opposition claims landslide victory

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Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela‘s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.

“Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first remarks.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming” based on voting tallies it had received from campaign representatives from about 40% of ballot boxes nationwide.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez hold a press conference after electoral authorities declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 29, 2024.

Matias Delacroix / AP

The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, earlier said Maduro had secured 51% of the vote to 44% for González. But it didn’t release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, only promising to do so in the “coming hours,” hampering the ability to verify the results.

Other nations voice doubts about official results

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Tokyo, said the U.S. has “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”

Foreign leaders held off recognizing the results.

“The Maduro regime should understand that the results it published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile. “We won’t recognize any result that is not verifiable.”

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said, “We receive the results announced by the CNE (electoral authority) with many doubts,” the Reuters news agency reports.

Reuters quotes Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou as saying, “It was an open secret. They were going to ‘win’ regardless of the actual results.”

Italy and Spain were among other countries indicating concern about the truth of the announced official results.

But China congratulated Maduro on his win, and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said he spoke with Maduro to congratulate him on his “historic” victory, according to Agence France-Presse.

The delay in announcing results – six hours after polls were supposed to close – indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.

When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.

“This is not the first time that they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he said to a few hundred supporters at the presidential palace. He provided no evidence to back the claim but promised “justice” for those who try to stir violence in Venezuela.

President Nicolas Maduro addresses supporters gathered outside the Miraflores presidential palace after electoral authorities declared him the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 29, 2024.

Fernando Vergara / AP

Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from the unlikeliest of opponents in González: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for Machado, considered a powerhouse.

Earlier, opposition supporters celebrated, online and outside a few voting centers, what they assured was a landslide victory for González.

“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting center in a working class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubling Maduro’s vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

“This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”

Voters started lining up at some voting centers across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.

Results will have broad impact

The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad in anticipation of Maduro winning another six year term.

Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.

The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.

Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was prevented from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.

Sunday’s ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro’s rule.

After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.

“No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognized.”

Economy central in unrest — and election

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into a freefall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then to mass emigration.

Economic sanctions from the U.S. seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection – which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate – only deepened the crisis.

Maduro’s pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year – one of the fastest in Latin America – after having shrunk 71% from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans haven’t seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples – sufficient to feed a family of four for a month – costs an estimated $385.

The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.

González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn’t materialize. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

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July 28, 2024
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro clinches nomination for upcoming national election; seeks third term

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Venezuela’s Machado speaks about campaign ban

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado speaks about ban on presidential candidacy

07:20

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro is set to seek a third term in July 28 elections after receiving the official nomination of the ruling PSUV party Saturday.

PSUV official Diosdado Cabello said Maduro, was elected “by acclamation” at a party conference.

FILE – In this Jan. 22, 2021 file photo, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony marking the start of the judicial year at the Supreme Court in Caracas, Venezuela.

AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

“We’ll go to a new victory,” the 61-year-old said as he accepted his ruling PSUV party’s official nomination to be its candidate, after 11 years in office marked by sanctions, economic collapse and accusations of widespread repression.

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March 16, 2024
Biden says he regrets using term

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President Biden said Saturday that he regrets using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

Facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the U.S. illegally, Biden expressed remorse, saying he didn’t want to demean any group, and sought to differentiate himself from former President Donald Trump.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart on Saturday, Biden said, “I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented.” The term was once common but is far less so today, particularly among Democrats who more fully embraced immigrant rights’ issues during Trump’s presidency.

The moment occurred Thursday night during an exchange in which Biden pressed Republicans in his address to pass a bipartisan border security deal that fell apart after Trump opposed it. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a stalwart Trump ally, then shouted at the president to say the name of Laken Riley, the Georgia woman killed last month, adding she was killed “by an illegal.”

“By an illegal, that’s right,” Biden responded immediately, before appearing to ask how many people are being killed by “legals.”

The death of Riley, a nursing student, has become a rallying cry for Republicans, a tragedy that they say encompasses the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S-Mexico border amid a record surge of immigrants entering the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.

Speaking to Capehart, Biden said, “Look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.”

It appeared to be a shift from a day earlier, when Biden had hesitated when asked by reporters if he regretted using the term, saying, “well I probably,” before pausing and saying “I don’t” and appearing to start saying the word “regret.”

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March 9, 2024
Detained Americans Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
—

Here’s a look at some recent cases of foreign governments detaining US citizens. For information about missing Americans, see Robert Levinson Fast Facts or POW/MIA in Iraq and Afghanistan Fast Facts.

Afghanistan

Ryan Corbett
August 2022 – Corbett, a businessman whose family lived in Afghanistan for more than a decade prior to the collapse of the Afghan government, returns to Afghanistan on a 10 day trip. Roughly one week into his visit, he was asked to come in for questioning by the local police. Corbett, his German colleague, and two local staff members were all detained. All but Corbett are eventually released. The Taliban has acknowledged holding Corbett, and he has been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department.

China

Mark Swidan
November 13, 2012 – Swidan, a businessman from Texas, is arrested on drug related charges by Chinese Police while in his hotel room in Dongguan.

2013 – Swidan is tried and pleads not guilty.

2019 – Convicted of manufacturing and trafficking drugs by the Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court in southern Guangdong province and given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve.

April 13, 2023 – The Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court denies Swidan’s appeal and upholds his death penalty.

Kai Li
September 2016 – Kai Li, a naturalized US citizen born in China, is detained while visiting relatives in Shanghai.

July 2018 – He is sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage following a secret trial held in August 2017.

Iran

Karan Vafadari
December 2016 – Karan Vafadari’s family announces that Karan and his wife, Afarin Niasari, were detained at Tehran airport in July. Vafadari, an Iranian-American, and Niasari, a green-card holder, ran an art gallery in Tehran.

March 2017 – New charges of “attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic and recruiting spies through foreign embassies” are brought against Vafadari and Niasari.

January 2018 – Vafadari is sentenced to 27 years in prison. Niasari is sentenced to 16 years.

July 2018 – Vafadari and Niasari are reportedly released from prison on bail while they await their appeals court rulings.

Russia

Paul Whelan
December 28, 2018 – Paul Whelan, from Michigan, a retired Marine and corporate security director, is arrested on accusations of spying. His family says he was in Moscow to attend a wedding.

January 3, 2019 – His lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, tells CNN Whalen has been formally charged with espionage.

January 22, 2019 – At his pretrial hearing, Whelan is denied bail. Whelan’s attorney Zherebenkov tells CNN that Whelan was found in possession of classified material when he was arrested in Moscow.

June 15, 2020 – Whelan is convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

August 8, 2021 – State news agency TASS reports that Whelan has been released from solitary confinement in the Mordovian penal colony where he is being held.

Evan Gershkovich
March 30, 2023 – Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. The Wall Street Journal rejects the spying allegations.

April 3, 2023 – The Russian state news agency TASS reports Gershkovich has filed an appeal against his arrest.

April 7, 2023 – Gershkovich is formally charged with espionage.

April 10, 2023 – The US State Department officially designates Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia.

April 18, 2023 – The Moscow City Court denies his appeal to change the terms of his detention. Gershkovich will continue to be held in a pre-trial detention center at the notorious Lefortovo prison until May 29.

Saudi Arabia

Walid Fitaihi
November 2017 – Dual US-Saudi citizen Dr. Walid Fitaihi is detained at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh along with other prominent Saudis, according to his lawyer Howard Cooper. Fitaihi is then transferred to prison.

July 2019 – Fitaihi is released on bond.

December 8, 2020 – Fitaihi is sentenced to six years in prison for charges including obtaining US citizenship without permission.

January 14, 2021 – A Saudi appeals court upholds Fitaihi’s conviction but reduces his sentence to 3.2 years and suspends his remaining prison term. Fitaihi still faces a travel ban and frozen assets.

Syria

Austin Tice
August 2012 – Tice disappears while reporting near the Syrian capital of Damascus. The Syrian government has never acknowledged that they have Tice in their custody.

September 2012 – A 43-second video emerges online that shows Tice in the captivity of what his family describe as an “unusual group of apparent jihadists.”

Majd Kamalmaz
February 2017 – Kamalmaz is detained at a checkpoint in Damascus. The Syrian government has never acknowledged Kamalmaz is in its custody.

Cuba

Alan Gross
December 2009 – Alan Gross is jailed while working as a subcontractor on a US Agency for International Development project aimed at spreading democracy. His actions are deemed illegal by Cuban authorities. He is accused of trying to set up illegal internet connections on the island. Gross says he was trying to help connect the Jewish community to the internet and was not a threat to the government.

March 12, 2011 – Gross is found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against the Cuban state.

April 11, 2014 – Ends a hunger strike that he launched the previous week in an effort to get the United States and Cuba to resolve his case.

December 17, 2014 – Gross is released as part of a deal with Cuba that paves the way for a major overhaul in US policy toward the island.

Egypt

16 American NGO Employees
December 2011 – Egyptian authorities carry out 17 raids on the offices of 10 nongovernmental organizations. The Egyptian general prosecutor’s office claims the raids were part of an investigation into allegations the groups had received illegal foreign financing and were operating without a proper license.

February 5, 2012 – Forty-three people face prosecution in an Egyptian criminal court on charges of illegal foreign funding as part of an ongoing crackdown on NGOs. Among the American defendants is Sam LaHood, International Republican Institute country director and the son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

February 15, 2012 – The US State Department confirms there are 16 Americans being held, not 19 as the Egyptian government announced.

February 20, 2012 – South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Arizona Senator John McCain meet with top Egyptian military and political leaders in Cairo.

March 1, 2012 – Some of the 43 detainees including American, Norwegian, German, Serbian and Palestinian activists leave Cairo after each post two-million Egyptian pounds bail.

April 20, 2012 – CNN is told Egyptian officials have filed global arrest notices with Interpol for some of the Americans involved in the NGO trial.

June 4, 2013 – An Egyptian court sentences the NGO workers: 27 workers in absentia to five-year sentences, 11 to one-year suspended jail sentences, and five others to two-year sentences that were not suspended, according to state-run newspaper Al Ahram. Only one American has remained in Egypt to fight the charges, but he also left after the court announced his conviction.

Iran

UC-Berkeley Grads
July 31, 2009 – Three graduates from the University of California at Berkeley, Sarah Shourd of Oakland, California, Shane Bauer, of Emeryville, California, and Joshua Fattal, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, are detained in Iran after hiking along the unmarked Iran-Iraq border in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region.

August 11, 2009 – Iran sends formal notification to the Swiss ambassador that the three American hikers have been detained. Switzerland represents the United States diplomatic interests in Iran since the United States and Iran do not have diplomatic relations.

October 2009 – The Iranian government allows a Swiss diplomat to visit the hikers at Evin Prison.

November 9, 2009 – Iran charges the three with espionage.

March 9, 2010 – The families of the three detained hikers speak by phone to the hikers for the first time since they were jailed.

May 20, 2010 – The detainees’ mothers are allowed to visit their children.

May 21, 2010 – The mothers are allowed a second visit, and the detained hikers speak publicly for the first time at a government-controlled news conference.

August 5, 2010 – Reports surface that Shourd is being denied medical treatment.

September 14, 2010 – Shourd is released on humanitarian grounds on $500,000 bail.

September 19, 2010 – Shourd speaks publicly to the press in New York.

November 27, 2010 – Two days after Thanksgiving, Fattal and Bauer are allowed to call home for the second time. Each call lasts about five minutes.

February 6, 2011 – Fattal and Bauer’s trial begins. Shourd has not responded to a court summons to return to stand trial.

May 4, 2011 – Shourd announces she will not return to Tehran to face espionage charges.

August 20, 2011 – Fattal and Bauer each receive five years for spying and three years for illegal entry, according to state-run TV. They have 20 days to appeal.

September 14, 2011 – A Western diplomat tells CNN an Omani official is en route to Tehran to help negotiate the release of Fattal and Bauer. Oman helped secure the release of Shourd in 2010.

September 21, 2011 – Fattal and Bauer are released from prison on bail of $500,000 each and their sentences are commuted. On September 25, they arrive back in the United States.

Saeed Abedini
September 26, 2012 – According to the American Center for Law and Justice, Saeed Abedini, an American Christian pastor who was born in Iran and lives in Idaho, is detained in Iran. The group says that Abedini’s charges stem from his conversion to Christianity from Islam 13 years ago and his activities with home churches in Iran.

January 2013 – Abedini is sentenced to eight years in prison, on charges of attempting to undermine the Iranian government.

January 16, 2016 – Iran releases four US prisoners including Abedini, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, and Jason Rezaian, in exchange for clemency of seven Iranians imprisoned in the United States for sanctions violations.

Amir Mirzaei Hekmati
August 2011 – Amir Mirzaei Hekmati travels to Iran to visit relatives and gets detained by authorities, according to his family. His arrest isn’t made public for months.

December 17, 2011 – Iran’s Intelligence Ministry claims to have arrested an Iranian-American working as a CIA agent, according to state-run Press TV.

December 18, 2011 – Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency broadcasts a video in which a young man says his name is Hekmati, and that he joined the US Marine Corps and worked with Iraqi officers.

December 19, 2011 – The US State Department confirms the identity of the man detained in Iran and calls for his immediate release.

December 20, 2011 – Hekmati’s family says that he was arrested in August while visiting relatives in Iran. The family asserts that they remained quiet about the arrest at the urging of Iranian officials who promised his release.

December 27, 2011 – Hekmati’s trial begins in Iran. Prosecutors accuse Hekmati of entering Iran with the intention of infiltrating the country’s intelligence system in order to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorist activities, according to the Fars news agency.

January 9, 2012 – An Iranian news agency reports that Hekmati is convicted of “working for an enemy country,” as well as membership in the CIA and “efforts to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism.” He is sentenced to death.

March 5, 2012 – An Iranian court dismisses a lower court’s death sentence for Hekmati and orders a retrial. He remains in prison.

September 2013 – In a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry, Hekmati says that his confession was obtained under duress.

April 11, 2014 – Hekmati’s sister tells CNN that Hekmati has been convicted in Iran by a secret court of “practical collaboration with the US government” and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

January 16, 2016 – Iran releases four US prisoners including Hekmati, Abedini, and Jason Rezaian, in exchange for clemency of seven Iranians indicted or imprisoned in the United States for sanctions violations.

Jason Rezaian
July 24, 2014 – The Washington Post reports that its Tehran correspondent and Bureau Chief Jason Rezaian, his wife Yeganeh Salehi and two freelance journalists were detained on July 22, 2014. An Iranian official confirmed to CNN that the group is being held by authorities.

July 29, 2014 – Iran releases one of three people detained alongside Rezaian, a source close to the family of the released detainee tells CNN. The released detainee is the husband of an Iranian-American photojournalist who remains in custody with Rezaian and his wife, according to the source.

August 20, 2014 – The Washington Post reports the photojournalist detained with Rezaian in July has been released. At her family’s request, the Post declines to publish her name.

October 6, 2014 – According to the Washington Post, Rezaian’s wife, Yeganeh Salehi, has been released on bail.

December 6, 2014 – During a 10-hour court session in Tehran, Rezaian is officially charged with unspecified crimes, according to the newspaper.

April 20, 2015 – According the Washington Post, Rezaian is being charged with espionage and other serious crimes including “collaborating with a hostile government” and “propaganda against the establishment.”

October 11, 2015 – Iran’s state media reports that Rezaian has been found guilty, but no details are provided about his conviction or his sentence. His trial reportedly took place between May and August.

November 22, 2015 – An Iranian court sentences Rezaian to prison. The length of the sentence is not specified.

January 16, 2016 – Iran releases four US prisoners including Rezaian, Hekmati, and Abedini, in exchange for the clemency of seven Iranians indicted or imprisoned in the United States for sanctions violations.

May 1, 2018 – Joins CNN as a global affairs analyst.

Reza “Robin” Shahini
July 11, 2016 – San Diego resident Reza “Robin” Shahini is arrested while visiting family in Gorgan, Iran. Shahini is a dual US-Iranian citizen.

October 2016 – Shahini is sentenced to 18 years in prison.

February 15, 2017 – Goes on a hunger strike to protest his sentence.

April 3, 2017 – The Center for Human Rights in Iran says Shahini has been released on bail while he awaits the ruling of the appeals court.

July 2018 – A civil lawsuit filed against the Iranian government on Shahini’s behalf indicates that Shahini has returned to the United States.

Xiyue Wang
July 16, 2017 – The semi-official news agency Fars News, citing a video statement from Iranian judicial spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejheie, reports that a US citizen has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of spying. Princeton University identifies the man as Chinese-born Xiyue Wang, an American citizen and graduate student in history. According to a university statement, Wang was arrested in Iran last summer while doing scholarly research in connection with his Ph.D. dissertation.

December 7, 2019 – The White House announces that Wang has been released and is returning to the United States. Iran released Wang in a prisoner swap, in coordination with the United States freeing an Iranian scientist named Massoud Soleimani.

Michael White
January 8, 2019 – Michael White’s mother, Joanne White, tells CNN she reported him missing when he failed to return to work in California in July, after traveling to Iran to visit his girlfriend.

January 9, 2019 – Bahram Ghasemi, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, says White “was arrested in the city of Mashhad a while ago, and within a few days after his arrest the US government was informed of the arrest through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.” Ghasemi denies allegations that White, a US Navy veteran, has been mistreated in prison.

March 2019 – White is handed a 13-year prison sentence on charges of insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and for publicly posting private images, according to his attorney Mark Zaid.

March 19, 2020 – White is released into the custody of the Swiss Embassy on medical furlough. One condition of his release is that he must stay in Iran.

June 4, 2020 – White is released, according to White’s mother and a person familiar with the negotiations.

Baquer and Siamak Namazi
October 2015 – Siamak Namazi, a Dubai-based businessman with dual US and Iranian citizenship, is detained while visiting relatives in Tehran.

February 2016 – Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF official and father of Siamak Namazi, is detained, his wife Effie Namazi says on Facebook. He is an Iranian-American.

October 2016 – The men are sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $4.8 million, according to Iran’s official news channel IRINN. Iran officials say five people were convicted and sentenced for “cooperating with Iran’s enemies,” a government euphemism that usually implies cooperating with the United States.

January 28, 2018 – Baquer Namazi is granted a four-day leave by the Iranian government, after being discharged from an Iranian hospital. Namazi’s family say the 81-year-old was rushed to the hospital on January 15 after a severe drop in his blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat and serious depletion of energy. This was the fourth time Namazi had been transferred to a hospital in the last year. In September, he underwent emergency heart surgery to install a pacemaker.

February 2018 – Baquer Namazi is released on temporary medical furlough.

February 2020 – Iran’s Revolutionary Court commutes Baquer Namazi’s sentence to time served and the travel ban on him is lifted.

May 2020 – According to the family, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) places a new travel ban on Baquer Namazi, preventing him from leaving the country.

October 26, 2021 – Baquer Namazi undergoes surgery to clear a “life-threatening blockage in one of the main arteries to his brain, which was discovered late last month,” his lawyer says in a statement.

October 1, 2022 – Baquer Namazi is released from detention and is permitted to leave Iran “to seek medical treatment abroad,” according to a statement from UN Secretary General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

March 9, 2023 – Siamak Namazi makes a plea to President Joe Biden to put the “liberty of innocent Americans above politics” and ramp up efforts to secure his release, in an interview with CNN from inside Iran’s Evin prison.

September 18, 2023 – Siamak Namazi is freed, along with four other Americans as part of a wider deal that includes the United States unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds.

North Korea

Kenneth Bae
December 11, 2012 – US officials confirm that American citizen Kenneth Bae has been detained in North Korea for over a month.

April 30, 2013 – North Korea’s Supreme Court sentences Bae to 15 years of hard labor for “hostile acts” against the country.

October 11, 2013 – Bae meets with his mother in North Korea.

January 20, 2014 – A statement is released in which Bae says that he had committed a “serious crime” against North Korea. Any statement made by Bae in captivity is sanctioned by the North Korean government. The country has a long history of forcing false confessions.

February 7, 2014 – The State Department announces that Bae has been moved from a hospital to a labor camp.

November 8, 2014 – The State Department announces that Bae and Matthew Miller have been released and are on their way home.

Jeffrey Fowle
June 6, 2014 – North Korea announces it has detained US citizen Jeffrey Edward Fowle, who entered the country as a tourist in April. Fowle was part of a tour group and was detained in mid-May after leaving a bible in a restaurant.

June 30, 2014 – North Korea says that it plans to prosecute Fowle and another detained American tourist, Matthew Miller, accusing them of “perpetrating hostile acts.”

October 21, 2014 – A senior State Department official tells CNN that Fowle has been released and is on his way home.

Aijalon Gomes
January 25, 2010 – Aijalon Mahli Gomes, of Boston, is detained in North Korea after crossing into the country illegally from China.

April 7, 2010 – He is sentenced to eight years of hard labor and ordered to pay a fine of 70 million North Korean won or approximately $600,000.

July 10, 2010 – Gomes is hospitalized after attempting to commit suicide.

August 25-27, 2010 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in North Korea, with hopes of negotiating for Gomes’ release.

August 27, 2010 – Carter and Gomes leave Pyongyang after Gomes is granted amnesty for humanitarian purposes.

Kim Dong Chul
October 2015 – Kim Dong Chul, a naturalized American citizen, is taken into custody after allegedly meeting a source to obtain a USB stick and camera used to gather military secrets. In January 2016, Kim is given permission to speak with CNN by North Korean officials and asks that the United States or South Korea rescue him.

March 25, 2016 – A North Korean official tells CNN that Kim has confessed to espionage charges.

April 29, 2016 – A North Korean official tells CNN that Kim has been sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for subversion and espionage.

May 9, 2018 – Trump announces that Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang Duk, also known as Tony Kim, appear to be in good health and are returning to the United States with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

May 10, 2018 – The three freed American detainees arrive at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Kim Hak-song
May 7, 2017 – The state-run Korean Central News Agency reports that US citizen Kim Hak-song was detained in North Korea on May 6 on suspicion of “hostile acts” against the regime. The regime describes Kim as “a man who was doing business in relation to the operation of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.”

May 9, 2018 – Trump announces that Kim Hak-song, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Sang Duk, also known as Tony Kim, appear to be in good health and are returning to the United States with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

May 10, 2018 – The three freed American detainees arrive at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Kim Sang Duk
April 22, 2017 – US citizen Kim Sang Duk, also known as Tony Kim, is detained by authorities at Pyongyang International Airport for unknown reasons. Kim taught for several weeks at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.

May 3, 2017 – State-run Korean Central News Agency reports that Kim is accused of attempting to overthrow the government.

May 9, 2018 – Trump announces that Tony Kim, Kim Hak-song and Kim Dong Chul appear to be in good health and are returning to the United States with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

May 10, 2018 – The three freed American detainees arrive at Joint Base Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling
March 2009 – Journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling are arrested while reporting from the border between North Korea and China for California-based Current Media.

June 4, 2009 – They are sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of entering the country illegally to conduct a smear campaign.

August 4, 2009 – Former US President Bill Clinton travels to Pyongyang on a private humanitarian mission to help secure their release.

August 5, 2009 – Lee and Ling are pardoned and released.

Matthew Miller
April 25, 2014 – North Korea’s news agency reports that Matthew Todd Miller was taken into custody on April 10. According to KCNA, Miller entered North Korea seeking asylum and tour up his tourist visa.

June 30, 2014 – North Korea says that it plans to prosecute Miller and another detained American tourist, Jeffrey Fowle, accusing them of “perpetrating hostile acts.”

September 14, 2014 – According to state-run media, Miller is convicted of committing “acts hostile” to North Korea and sentenced to six years of hard labor.

November 8, 2014 – The State Department announces Miller and Kenneth Bae have been released and are on their way home.

Merrill Newman
October 26, 2013 – Merrill Newman of Palo Alto, California, is detained in North Korea, according to his family. Just minutes before his plane is to depart, Newman is removed from the flight by North Korean authorities, his family says.

November 22, 2013 – The US State Department says North Korea has confirmed to Swedish diplomats that it is holding an American citizen. The State Department has declined to confirm the identity of the citizen, citing privacy issues, but the family of Newman says the Korean War veteran and retired financial consultant has been detained since October.

November 30, 2013 – KCNA reports Newman issued an apology to the people of North Korea, “After I killed so many civilians and (North Korean) soldiers and destroyed strategic objects in the DPRK during the Korean War, I committed indelible offensive acts against the DPRK government and Korean people.” His statement ends: “If I go back to (the) USA, I will tell the true features of the DPRK and the life the Korean people are leading.”

December 7, 2013 – Newman returns to the United States, arriving at San Francisco International Airport. North Korea’s state news agency reports Newman was released for “humanitarian” reasons.

Eddie Yong Su Jun
April 14, 2011 – The KCNA reports that US citizen Eddie Yong Su Jun was arrested in November 2010 and has been under investigation for committing a crime against North Korea. No details are provided on the alleged crime.

May 27, 2011 – Following a visit from the US delegation which includes the special envoy for North Korean human rights, Robert King, and the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development, Jon Brause, to North Korea, Yong Su Jun is released.

Otto Frederick Warmbier
January 2, 2016 – Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia college student, is detained in North Korea after being accused of a “hostile act” against the government.

February 29, 2016 – The North Korean government releases a video of Warmbier apologizing for committing, in his own words, “the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel.” It is not known if Warmbier was forced to speak.

March 16, 2016 – Warmbier is sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state, a North Korean official tells CNN.

June 13, 2017 – Warmbier is transported back to the United States via medevac flight to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. There, doctors say that he has suffered severe brain damage. Doctors say Warmbier shows no current signs of botulism, which North Korean officials claim he contracted after his trial.

June 19, 2017 – Warmbier’s family issues a statement that he has died.

April 26, 2018 – Warmbier’s parents file a wrongful death lawsuit against the North Korean government charging that the country’s regime tortured and killed their son, according to lawyers for the family.

December 24, 2018 – A federal judge in Washington awards Warmbier’s parents more than half a billion dollars in the wrongful death suit against the North Korean government. North Korea did not respond to the lawsuit – the opinion was rendered as a so-called “default judgment” – and the country has no free assets in the US for which the family could make a claim.

Russia

Trevor Reed
2019 – While visiting a longtime girlfriend, Trevor Reed is taken into custody after a night of heavy drinking according to state-run news agency TASS and Reed’s family. Police tell state-run news agency RIA-Novosti that Reed was involved in an altercation with two women and a police unit that arrived at the scene following complaints of a disturbance. Police allege Reed resisted arrest, attacked the driver, hit another policeman, caused the car to swerve by grabbing the wheel and created a hazardous situation on the road, RIA stated.

July 30, 2020 – Reed is sentenced to nine years in prison for endangering “life and health” of Russian police officers.

April 1, 2021 – The parents of Reed reveal that their son served as a Marine presidential guard under the Obama administration – a fact they believe led Russia to target him.

April 27, 2022 – Reed is released in a prisoner swap.

June 14, 2022 – Reed tells CNN that he has filed a petition with the United Nations (UN), declaring that Russia violated international law with his detention and poor treatment.

Brittney Griner
February 17, 2022 – Two-time Olympic basketball gold medalist and WBNA star Brittney Griner is taken into custody following a customs screening at Sheremetyevo Airport. Russian authorities said Griner had cannabis oil in her luggage and accused her of smuggling significant amounts of a narcotic substance, an offense the Russian government says is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

July 7, 2022 – Griner pleads guilty to drug charges in a Russian court.

August 4, 2022 – Griner is found guilty of drug smuggling with criminal intent and sentenced by a Russian court to 9 years of jail time with a fine of one million rubles (roughly $16,400).

October 25, 2022 – At an appeal hearing, a Russian judge leaves Griner’s verdict in place, upholding her conviction on drug smuggling charges and reducing only slightly her nine-year prison sentence.

November 9, 2022 – Griner’s attorney tells CNN she is being moved to a Russian penal colony where she is due to serve the remainder of her sentence.

December 8, 2022 – US President Biden announces that Griner has been released from Russian detention and is on her way home.

Turkey

Serkan Golge
July 2016 – While on vacation in Turkey, Serkan Golge is arrested and accused of having links to the Gulenist movement. Golge is a 37-year-old NASA physicist who holds dual Turkish-US citizenship.

February 8, 2018 – Golge is sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.

September 2018 – A Turkish court reduces Golge’s prison sentence to five years.

May 29, 2019 – The State Department announces that Golge has been released.

Andrew Brunson
October 2016 – Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina native, is arrested in Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast, where he is pastor at the Izmir Resurrection Church. Brunson, an evangelical Presbyterian pastor, is later charged with plotting to overthrow the Turkish government, disrupting the constitutional order and espionage.

March 2018 – A formal indictment charges Brunson with espionage and having links to terrorist organizations.

October 12, 2018 – Brunson is sentenced to three years and one month in prison but is released based on time served.

Venezuela

Timothy Hallett Tracy
April 24, 2013 – Timothy Hallett Tracy, of Los Angeles, is arrested at the Caracas airport, according to Reporters Without Borders. Tracy traveled to Venezuela to make a documentary about the political division gripping the country.

April 25, 2013 – In a televised address, newly elected President Nicolas Maduro says he ordered the arrest of Tracy for “financing violent groups.”

April 27, 2013 – Tracy is formally charged with conspiracy, association for criminal purposes and use of a false document.

June 5, 2013 – Tracy is released from prison and expelled from Venezuela.

Joshua Holt
May 26, 2018 – Joshua Holt and his Venezuelan wife, Thamara Holt, are released by Venezuela. The two had been imprisoned there since 2016. The American traveled to Venezuela to marry Thamara in 2016, and shortly afterward was accused by the Venezuelan government of stockpiling weapons and attempting to destabilize the government. He was held for almost two years with no trial.

“Citgo 6”

November 2017 – After arriving in Caracas, Venezuela, for an impromptu business meeting, Tomeu Vadell and five other Citgo executives – Gustavo Cardenas, Jorge Toledo, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano and Jose Angel Pereira – are arrested and detained on embezzlement and corruption charges. Citgo is the US subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil and natural gas company PDVSA. Five of the six men are US citizens; one is a US legal permanent resident.

December 2019 – The “Citgo 6” are transferred from the detention facility, where they have been held without trial for more than two years, to house arrest.

February 5, 2020 – They are moved from house arrest into prison, hours after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido met with US President Donald Trump

July 30, 2020 – Two of the men – Cárdenas and Toledo – are released on house arrest after a humanitarian visit to Caracas by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and a team of non-government negotiators.

November 27, 2020 – The six oil executives are found guilty and are given sentences between 8 to 13 years in prison.

April 30, 2021 – The men are released from prison to house arrest.

October 16, 2021 – The “Citgo 6,” all under house arrest, are picked up by the country’s intelligence service SEBIN, just hours after the extradition of Alex Saab, a Colombian financier close to Maduro.

March 8, 2022 – Cardenas is one of two detainees released from prison. The other, Jorge Alberto Fernandez, a Cuban-US dual citizen detained in Venezuela since February 2021, was accused of terrorism for carrying a small domestic drone. The releases take place after a quiet trip to Caracas by a US government delegation.

October 1, 2022 – US President Biden announces the release and return of Toledo, Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, and Pereira.

Matthew Heath

September 2020 – Is arrested and charged with terrorism in Venezuela.

June 20, 2022 – Family of Heath state that he has attempted suicide. “We are aware of reports that a US citizen was hospitalized in Venezuela,” a State Department spokesperson says. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.”

October 1, 2022 – US President Biden announces the release and return of Heath.

Airan Berry and Luke Denman

May 4, 2020 – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says two American “mercenaries” have been apprehended after a failed coup attempt to capture and remove him. Madura identifies the captured Americans as Luke Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41. On state television, Maduro brandishes what he claims are the US passports and driver’s licenses of the two men, along with what he says are their ID cards for Silvercorp, a Florida-based security services company.

May 5, 2020 – Denman appears on Venezuelan state TV. He is shown looking directly at the camera recounting his role in “helping Venezuelans take back control of their country.”

August 7, 2020 – Prosecutors announce that Berry and Denman have been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

December 20, 2023 – It is announced that the US has reached an agreement to secure the release of 10 Americans, including Berry and Denman, held in Venezuela.

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March 7, 2024
Unbelievable facts

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Due to Lenten practices, capybaras are consumed in Venezuela, classified as “fish” by…

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February 21, 2024
Venezuela pit mine collapse reportedly leaves dozens of people buried in mud

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The wall of an open pit mine in central Venezuela collapsed on Tuesday, reportedly leaving dozens of workers trapped under mud and sparking a frantic rescue effort. Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional cited Edgar Colina Reyes, the government security secretary for Bolivar, the nearest city to the mine in the town of La Paragua, as confirming the accident, but his office had provided no further detail as of Tuesday evening.

CNN’s Spanish language service quoted local mayor Yorgi Arciniega as saying at least 30 people were killed in the collapse, with about 100 more buried, but there was no immediate confirmation of that toll from national officials.

The newspaper, and regional outlet Correo del Caroni, said Reyes was heading for the Bulla Loca mine Wednesday morning to assess the situation.

The newspapers both quoted a local journalist as saying the mine wall that collapsed was approximately 115 feet tall. Photos posted to social media from the scene showed a large, open pit of clay-colored mud, with workers and others racing to help people injured or trapped by the apparent landslide.

Iron ore, gold, bauxite and other minerals are extracted from mines across the Venezuelan state of Bolivar, including many unsanctioned sites.

The last major accident in the region, according to Correo del Caroni, was only a couple months ago in the Gran Sabana district. At least 12 people were reportedly killed in that incident, which came only a month after a previous accident at the same mine that did not result in any deaths, according to the newspaper.

Local journalist Fritz Sanchez was sharing images and information from the Bulla Loca mine on his social media accounts Tuesday.

“What we were warned of this past December has happened today,” he said in one post. “They tell me of a collapse in the Bulla Local mine, which has left more than 100 people buried.”

He indicated the pit may have been an illegal gold mining operation, but there was no information immediately available from Venezuelan authorities to confirm the nature of the site or the number of people trapped or injured.

Human rights groups have previously voiced serious concern over the number of children working in Venezuela’s open gold mines.

A pair of boots and other tools used in an open pit mine are seen as Venezuelan children work through the mud in search of gold in El Callao, Bolivar State, Venezuela, in a Sept. 2, 2023.

YRIS PAUL/AFP/Getty

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Tucker Reals

Tucker Reals is cbsnews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington D.C. and London.

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February 21, 2024
Griselda archives: Dirty money affords brutal killers luxury in Miami
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MIAMI – Luis Garcia-Blanco, a Cuban who had arrived in Miami on the Mariel boatlift, was accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend Maricel Gutierrez in the head with a machine gun in 1980, in Miami-Dade. He had allegedly also cut off her finger and kept it in a Bible.

In 1981, Garcia-Blanco was working as a bodyguard for Rafael Leon Rodriguez, who police knew as the Venezuelan son of a cop who was a marksman-turned-hitman and a cocaine distributor for Colombian traffickers. A law-enforcement task force pounced on them.

Julie Hawkins, a former Metro-Dade detective, told Netflix Tudum that day she was holding a phone with one hand and a police radio with the other to help catch Rodriguez — who was better known as “Amilcar” — and was a murder suspect in several cases.

“It was crazy! Everybody’s talking — trying to advise where he is — and at one point, one of our detectives even rammed the car that Amilcar and this other guy were driving,” Hawkins told Tudum.

There weren’t cell phones when detectives arrested Rodriguez. Since he used payphones, Hawkins said they used a “trap and trace device,” which identified the phone number of the payphone he was using. With the number, the phone company provided the location, and she shared it with operatives in the field.

There was a shooting when police officers tried to arrest Rodriguez and Garcia-Blanco. While Garcia-Blanco fired at police officers and was arrested, Rodriguez ran away. A man nearby told police Rodriguez took off his Rolex and gave it to him in exchange for his car and sped away.

Hawkins told Tulum that she found Rodriguez hiding behind a washing machine and described him as “soft-spoken” and “very calm.” When he was in handcuffs, he was wearing a brown velvet blazer, a white long-sleeve collared shirt, a brown leather belt, and brown aviator sunglasses.

DIRTY MONEY TRAIL

The United Nations Office of Drug and Crime released this graphic to explain the common stages of money laundering. (UN)

Federal agents already knew that Rodriguez’s lavish lifestyle included living in posh apartments in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood and Miami-Dade’s city of Aventura. Foreign money has helped fuel Miami-Dade’s boom in high-end real estate, according to the National Association of Realtors.

William P. Rosenblatt, a U.S. Army veteran who worked in federal law enforcement, was dedicated to targeting the way dirty money was flowing from cocaine users in the U.S. to a supply chain of dealers, distributors, and foreign traffickers.

“You can take a large corporation, take the top executive away, the financial structure is still there,” Rosenblatt told Local 10 News Reporter Mark Potter in 1982. “You take the financial structure away from a legitimate or legal organization, it crumbles.”

Rosenblatt had worked for the U.S. Customs Service in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco before meeting Potter as the Special Agent-in-Charge in Miami. He was part of Operation Greenback, which focused on the cartel’s money laundering strategy to make “dirty money” appear “clean.”

Rosenblatt said the operation was meant to bring “pressure to bear on the financial side of these narcotics organizations.” They relied on the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which established a program with reporting requirements and recordkeeping to prevent money laundering.

In 1982, the operation also resulted in a case against The Great American National Bank of Dade County on four counts of failure to file currency transaction reports with the Internal Revenue Service. In 1984, a group was arrested for buying cashier’s checks and money orders in amounts less than $10,000 to avoid transaction reports and deposit them in banks in Miami.

At a crime scene in 1982, Metro-Dade Sgt. Skip Pearson, who focused on narcotics, told Potter the violence in Miami-Dade was a sign of trouble to come.

“You are going to see South Florida not only the base for drug distribution and cocaine distribution for the Colombians,” Pearson said. “You are going to see it for every South American country that has the capability of either manufacturing cocaine or the coca paste.”

Over four decades later, the new challenge for authorities is money laundering through cryptocurrencies — untraceable by design — and new synthetic drugs. U.S. authorities have identified Venezuela as “a major” money laundering country. Other countries of concern include Haiti and Panama.

TIMELINE OF FEDERAL LAWS

Federal anti-money laundering laws evolved slowly during the 80s and 90s, and so has the technology used for recordkeeping, financial management, and auditing.
- In 1986, the Money Laundering Control Act introduced civil and criminal forfeiture for BSA violations. In 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act expanded the definition of financial institution to include car dealers and real estate closings and required the verification of identity for monetary instruments over $3,000.
- In 1992, The Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act strengthened the sanctions for BSA violations, it required suspicious activity reports and verification for wire transfers. In 1994, the Money Laundering Suppression Act required banks to enhance procedures for referring cases to law enforcement.
- In 1998, The Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act required banking agencies to develop anti-money laundering training for examiners and created specialized task forces. The 911 attack also revealed a need to strengthen laws and law enforcement.
- The 2001 PATRIOT Act criminalized the financing of terrorism, prohibited financial institutions from engaging in business with foreign shell banks, required due diligence procedures, and improved information sharing between financial institutions and the U.S. government.
- The Intelligence Reform & Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 required the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate cross-border electronic transmittals of funds.
Source: U.S. Treasury
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Andrea Torres

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February 16, 2024
Venezuela orders suspension of UN rights office, gives staff days to leave

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Earlier this week the UN agency expressed ‘deep concern’ over the detention of prominent rights activist, Rocio San Miguel.

Venezuela has ordered the local office of the United Nations human rights body to suspend operations and given its staff 72 hours to leave, accusing it of promoting opposition to the South American country.

Foreign Affairs Minister Yvan Gil announced the decision at a news conference in the capital Caracas on Thursday.

He said the office – the local technical advisory office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – had been used by the international community “to maintain a discourse” against Venezuela.

The move came two days after the UN agency expressed “deep concern” over the detention of prominent rights activist Rocio San Miguel and called for her “immediate release”.

Gil said the UN rights office had taken on an “inappropriate role” and had become “the private law firm of the coup plotters and terrorists who permanently conspire against the country”.

He said the decision would remain in place until the agency “publicly rectify, before the international community, their colonialist, abusive and violating attitude of the United Nations Charter”.

In a statement, Venezuela’s government said it decided to suspend the activities of the UN rights office and “carry out a holistic revision of the technical cooperation terms”. It said the review would take place over the next 30 days.

It was not immediately clear if the Venezuelan government had notified the UN directly of its order to close the office. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said during his daily briefing on Thursday that he had just been made aware of the decision and would get back to members of the press.

The UN human rights office has operated in Venezuela since 2019.

Rights activist detained

San Miguel, 57, was arrested last Friday in the immigration area of an airport in Caracas, sparking an international outcry.

Prosecutors have accused her of taking part in the latest alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, which the government has said was backed by the United States.

Authorities said in January that they had uncovered five plots to assassinate Maduro, implicating rights activists, journalists and soldiers.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday expressed “deep concern” over San Miguel’s detention.

In a post on the social media platform X, the office urged “her immediate release” and respect for her right to legal defence.

Shortly before Gil’s Thursday announcement, the UN agency called for the respect of “due process guarantees, including right to defence” in her case.

The detention of San Miguel comes in a crunch election year that has already seen Maduro block his main opposition rival, prompting the US to threaten to reimpose recently eased oil sanctions.

San Miguel is the founder of an NGO called Citizen Control, which investigates security and military issues, such as the number of citizens killed or abused by security forces. She has detailed military involvement in illegal mining operations, and a recent femicide in the army.

International rights groups see in the arrests a coordinated plan to silence government critics and perceived opponents.

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February 15, 2024
I’m the world’s most glam fighter pilot but now I want to be Miss Universe

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A GLAMOROUS fighter pilot decided to swap the cockpit for a different kind of runway as she now wants to become Miss Universe.

Michelle Martin, who joined the Chilean Air force at 18, will now represent her homeland in the famous beauty pageant.

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Military fighter pilot Michelle Martin will run for Miss UniverseCredit: Jam Press

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The 24-year-old often flaunts her figure and beauty on social mediaCredit: Jam Press

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Born in Venezuela, Michelle joined the Chilean Air Force at 18Credit: Jam Press

At 24 years old, Michelle has risen to the rank of Second Lieutenant.

But military career did not stop her from being one of the most glamorous fighter pilots out there.

Michelle often flaunts her beauty on and off duty – from a tight sleek bun look matched with her uniform, to summery snaps at the beach.

She was born in Venezuela and settled in Chile with her family more than five years ago.

Read more about Miss Universe

Daughter of a Chilean father and a Venezuelan mother, Michelle will represent the city of Puerto Montt where she has been based for several years.

Talking about her decision to take part in Miss Universe, she said: “My decision to participate was enthusiastically welcomed by my family in Chile and Venezuela, as well as by my Air Force colleagues.”

“I really love military life. “The career is very nice and you grow integrally,” she said in a previous interview.

Michelle is one of only a few candidates who aren’t involved in the entertainment industry.

This year, Miss Universe Chile representatives include Big Brother star, Francisca Maira and influencer, Bárbara Lackington, who appeared on MasterChef in 2019.

Trans model, Ariel Cordero, has also been announced as a candidate.

The final of Miss Universe 2024 will take place in Mexico City later this year on November 17.

An organisation spokesperson said: “We would like to present Michelle Martin who qualified for Miss Universe Chile 2024 by in-person casting.

“Soon you will be able to learn more about Michelle in our Miss Universe Chile app.”

Last week, it was confirmed that a 72-year-old grandmother is vying to become Miss Universe Argentina.

If successful, Estela Menéndez hopes to represent her country at the international event this year.

She was able to enter the pageant after the age limit was dropped for 2024.

Previously, candidates had to be aged between 18 and 28 years.

Filipino fashion designer Jocelyn Cubales said she is ready to walk the catwalk at 69 years old after she also entered Miss Universe.

Whilst some women might want to shun the spotlight, Jocelyn is happy appearing on stage and has entered numerous pageants before.

This includes the Ms Asia International Global and Mrs Mother of the Universe competition, both of which she won in 2014 and 2017 respectively.

When the Miss Universe organisation relaxed these rules last year, Jocelyn knew she wanted to enter the pageant.

Even press attention and the younger competitors don’t seem to faze this 69-year-old, with her taking part in a regional leg of the Miss Universe pageant in Quezon City last month.

The fashion design is no stranger to barring all though, regularly wear stomach barring outfit for pageants and modelling gigs.

Even when she is off duty, the 69-year-old is still wearing denim hot pants and high heels – proving that age really is just a number.

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Michelle will represent the city of Puerto Montt, where she has been based for yearsCredit: Jam Press

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At 24, she has risen through the ranks and became Second LieutenantCredit: instagram

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Michelle said the news to join the beauty pageant were welcomed by her family and friends at the Air ForceCredit: Jam Press

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Juliana Cruz Lima

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February 2, 2024