As he had promised, Donald Trump hit the ground running as soon as he was sworn-in as the 47th President of the USA. He signed a record-breaking forty-two Executive Orders, and the ones on deporting illegal immigrants would be of interest to Guyanese, whose relatives have been entering the US via the “back-track” for decades, and most recently overstaying their visitor visas.
He also broadened the definition of “illegals” by announcing the ending of “birthright” citizenship: wherein any baby born in the USA inherits citizenship regardless of the immigration status of their parents. One tactic familiar to Guyanese is pregnant visiting mothers delivering their “American” babies, then returning home with their children.
Raids are already being conducted by ICE to round up illegal immigrants, and it has been reported that two planeloads of deportees have landed in Guatemala. The usually jam-packed, Guyanese-dominated Liberty Ave in Richmond Hill, Queens was deserted, as discretion took the place of braggadocio and swagger. Community leaders have been pleading with their constituents not to snitch on illegals as the community became shrouded with tension.
VP Jagdeo has announced that Guyana would be accepting its deportees; unlike Mexico, which refused landing permission for a military aircraft even as it was preparing camps to house deportees.
Meanwhile, Maduro has announced that he would be accepting Venezuela deportees from their more than 500,000 illegals who crossed the Mexican border into the US. This announcement is somewhat anomalous, since it had been assumed that Maduro would use his acquiescence as a bargaining chip against Trump removing Chevron’s licence, reinstated by Biden to lift and ship 220,000 bpd of Venezuelan crude to the US.
In the meantime, however, Trump has said his administration is looking “very strongly” at the country, and would likely stop buying oil from them.
“It was a great country 20 years ago, and now it’s a mess,” he told reporters in the Oval Office hours after his inauguration. “We don’t have to buy their oil; we have plenty of oil for ourselves.”
During the presidential campaign, Trump had called Maduro a “dictator”, and had announced he would be facilitating increased drilling from American reserves. We have to be careful that this is a feint, since Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, announced that “Diplomacy is back…talking is a tactic”, and spoke with multiple officials in Venezuela, with whom he would be meeting soon.
Back in 2020, Grenell had secretly met with a Maduro representative to try to work out the Venezuelan dictator’s peaceful exit from power, after his 2018 re-election was considered a sham by the US and most Western countries; but no agreement had been reached.
We have an identical situation recurring after last July’s election, which was rigged by Maduro. The Biden Administration recognised Opposition Leader Eduardo Gonzales as Venezuela’s “president-elect”, but only slapped on some innocuous personal sanctions.
Maduro’s rule over Venezuela presents a clear and ever-present danger to our sovereignty, and we were reminded of this just before his inauguration on Jan 10th, when he announced he was arranging for the election of a Governor over Essequibo, which he had “annexed” last year. For good measure, he prodded the US when he later asserted that he would invade Puerto Rico.
Deploying the DIME instruments of national power – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic – we should work closely with the Trump Administration on a common strategy towards the removal of Maduro in which there are a number of high-level anti-Maduro appointees such as Secretary of State Mario Rubio. At his confirmation hearing, the latter said Venezuela is “governed by a narco-trafficking organization that has empowered itself as a nation-state.” He pointed out that Venezuela’s closest ally remains Cuba, America’s oldest Latin American foe, and that Maduro’s regime also is aligned with China, Russia, and Iran – which is building drones in Venezuela.
It is unlikely that the US would pursue regime change in Venezuela through direct military action; but they would have to be more creative than reapplying the oil and personal sanctions in conjunction with support for the Opposition from the first Trump regime. India should be jawboned to block Venezuela’s BRICS aspirations in exchange for their oil purchases. We should strengthen our cooperation with Brazil, since any Venezuelan invasion of our Rupununi would have to pass through Brazilian territory. During Maduro’s last sabre-rattling episode, Brazil moved troops to block them. For our northern Essequibo jungle terrain, we repeat our proposal that we should establish a military base there, from which we can wage an asymmetrical war strategy against invading Venezuelan troops.
