Venezuelans are asking Mexico for humanitarian flights home

She cries when she thinks about the trip because she knows it was not worth it. Now Villalobos is asking for a humanitarian flight back to his homeland.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelan migrants are now stranded in Mexico or near its southern neighbor after the US announced a new plan.

Dozens of Venezuelans like Villalobos and her eight-year-old son waited for a place on a humanitarian flight to a Catholic Church-sponsored migrant home in Mexico City on Tuesday evening.

“I want to go back to my country because they are slamming the door for us, in our face,” the 27-year-old said.

Villalobos, a single mother, left the western Venezuelan state of Julia with her only son several months ago.

After working in Colombia for a few months, she saved enough money to embark on the long journey to America, crossing the dangerous Darien Gap, the nearly impassable mountainous rainforest between Panama and Colombia.

In recent years, according to United Nations figures, 7.1 million Venezuelans have fled their country, fleeing the once-prosperous oil state’s prolonged economic and social decline.

Human rights activists have criticized Mexico for continuing to sign agreements with the United States, unable to accommodate more migrants or displaced citizens who want to immigrate to the United States.

“It all seems easy for them to say, ‘Leave them here,’ but where? In the streets?” said Luis Carbajal, director of the Human Mobility Pastoral Movement in the Archdiocese of Mexico.

It’s always ‘no’.

A dozen migrants interviewed by Reuters at a shelter in Mexico City said their country’s embassy had told them they were asking the Mexican government for support to begin humanitarian flights to Caracas.

The first flight of Venezuelan migrants from Mexico left on Tuesday, two Mexican officials told Reuters. Passengers paid a discounted rate of $200 per person, officials said.

Since 2018, the government of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has been implementing a voluntary repatriation program called “Return to Homeland”.

As of June this year, around 30,000 Venezuelans have returned home from 19 Latin American countries, according to government figures.

A plane flown by the Mexican government carrying Venezuelan migrants will leave on Wednesday, the Mexican Foreign Ministry told Reuters.

The announcement came as dozens of Venezuelans protested in front of Mexico’s foreign ministry in Mexico City, demanding help.

“It’s terrible because there’s always a ‘no’ in Mexico. I can’t work, the doors are closed to us, we can’t leave, we can’t go in, they won’t let us cross into the United States,” he said. Kerlin Mora, a Venezuelan immigrant in protest.