Venezuela announced on Tuesday that it will once again accept flights from the United States carrying native deportees in response to a request from the Trump administration.
The flights were recently temporarily canceled after President Donald Trump last Saturday closed the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela “in its entirety.” The development came after Venezuela had accepted around 8,000 nationals flown in from the U.S. since March, as of a CBS report published in late October.
After the U.S. asked Venezuela to resume the twice-weekly flights of migrants from the U.S., Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s administration this week agreed to do so.
An overflight and landing application marking a request for an exception for Trump’s airspace closure in the country was submitted Monday by U.S.-based Eastern Airlines, according to NBC News. The application was made public on Tuesday by Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister.
Maduro’s move to acquiesce to the White House comes as speculation grows that Washington will seek to topple his regime through military or intelligence means.
Trump confirmed over the weekend that he recently held a phone call with Maduro, signaling he has remained personally engaged with the Venezuelan leader as tensions escalate in the region, particularly after Washington authorized around two dozen lethal strikes targeting boats suspected to be carrying South American “narco-terrorists” and drugs to the U.S.
The two men talked for under 15 minutes during the November 21 call, according to Reuters. Trump reportedly refused a series of Maduro’s requests, and they discussed a possible meeting, as well as the conditions of amnesty if the Venezuelan president were to voluntarily step down.
“I wouldn’t say it went well, or badly. It was a phone call,” Trump said on Sunday.
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Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said during a CNN interview the same day that the U.S. has offered Maduro the chance to leave his country for Russia or elsewhere.
The Trump administration considers Maduro to be an illegitimate leader, after the Venezuelan president claimed a reelection victory last year on a ballot that the U.S. and other Western governments dismissed as a sham process.
