(NewsNation) — A plane with nearly 200 migrants landed Monday in Venezuela as the South American country resumed accepting repatriation flights from the United States.
The arrival came after the U.S. government reached an agreement with President Nicolás Maduro, who suspended repatriation flights earlier this month when the Treasury Department pulled Chevron’s license to export Venezuelan oil.
The aircraft that landed had 199 people aboard, a Department of Homeland Security official told NewsNation. They said the group included members of Tren de Aragua, a gang the Trump administration has designated as a terrorist organization.
Monday hearing to address Trump’s deportation flights
Officials are due in court Monday afternoon for a hearing on the administration’s previous deportation flights and whether they violated a federal judge’s orders.
Monday’s landing comes a week after the Trump administration sent more than 200 alleged gang members, most of them Venezuelans, to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S., said the resumed repatriations to Venezuela would guarantee “the return of our compatriots to their nation with the safeguard of their Human Rights.”
Rodríguez said his country would work on getting the “brothers kidnapped in El Salvador” returned to their homes.
Trump claims most of the deportees sent to El Salvador were Tren de Aragua members, which he considers an invading force. He has sought to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows a president to summarily deport noncitizens during wartime.
Judge James E. Boasberg issued a temporary order halting the deportations under the 18th-century law, but the Trump administration allowed the flights to proceed last weekend. Now, the Justice Department is at loggerheads with the judge over how the incident occurred.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told NewsNation the Trump administration will respect the judge’s ruling while continuing deportations using other means.
Kevin Bohn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.