Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday night called on his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden to stop manipulating the migration issue to attack his country.
“Joe Biden attacked and lied about Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua today. Joe Biden lies about our countries; they squeezed our country to the extreme to destroy it. Then they launch global media campaigns on migration,” Maduro denounced to state television Venezolana de Televisión.
The president asserted that these campaigns serve to “manipulate politically, instrumentalize and criminalize the issue of migration.”
The United States “does not treat the problem of migrants professionally, seriously and humanely; it only tries to use it to attack a country,” he said.
He also recalled that “Venezuela has been pressured, attacked and sanctioned,” claiming that for this reason and because of the harsh consequences of economic restrictions on the country, part of the population decided to migrate in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
However, he stated that “more than half of the population that migrated between 2018 and 2020 has returned and is returning to Venezuela; they are welcome. And we demand that President Joe Biden not manipulate the issue of migration from Latin America and the Caribbean.”