At least five US citizens remain in detention in Venezuela since the liberation last week of six others who flew back home with President Donald Trump’s special envoy, a local rights group said Wednesday.Along with the five, there were also two people with other nationalities but who maintain permanent residency in the United States, non-governmental organization Foro Penal said in a statement.They were among 54 foreigners in total held in Venezuela, including 11 people from Spain, nine from Italy, and one French-American, it added.Special envoy Richard Grenell has said there were “at least six” US citizens left in Venezuela after another six were freed following his talks with President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas last week.They were “in essence hostages” held on “really lame charges,” Grenell told “The Megyn Kelly Show” this week.”It’s Nicolas Maduro’s position that some of these individuals were arrested because of terrorism charges or individuals that were trying to kill the president of Venezuela or the vice president,” Grenell said. “Our information doesn’t say that.”Grenell noted that two of the six freed last week were last-minute replacements for two other US prisoners who had refused their jailers’ orders to get ready to depart, not believing their liberation was real.The other four had recounted that “We were released into this room, and we had the other two guys with us, and they asked us to shave and to get ready, get cleaned up. And two of the individuals said: ‘We’re not doing this again. We’ve done this four or five times. This is fake’,” Grenell said.”We only learned later… that the Venezuelan government found two other Americans to replace them.”The envoy said work continues for the liberation of the last prisoners, adding: “We will absolutely go back.”Trump said over the weekend that Venezuela had agreed to accept illegal migrants deported from the United States following the Grenell meeting.The president has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history, vowing to expel millions of undocumented immigrants, many from Latin American nations.Grenell travelled to Caracas despite the United States not recognizing Maduro’s claim of victory in July elections that the opposition and much of the international community say he stole.After the meeting, Maduro called for a “new beginning” in bilateral ties.

The UN chief warned Wednesday against ethnic cleansing in Gaza as he rejected US President Donald Trump’s bombshell proposal for the United States to take control of the Palestinian territory and displace all its people.Trump, in a White House news conference on Tuesday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stunningly proposed “long-term ownership” of Gaza by the United States, triggering an international uproar.The remarks came after he has repeatedly called in recent days for the war-ravaged territory’s residents to move to Jordan or Egypt.”At its essence, the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is about the right of Palestinians to simply live as human beings in their own land,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech to a UN committee that deals with the rights of Palestinians.But, he added, “we have seen the realization of those rights steadily slip farther out of reach.””We have seen a chilling, systematic dehumanization and demonization of an entire people,” Guterres said.Guterres said nothing justified the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza but “the catalogue of destruction and unspeakable horrors” that came as Israel attacked Gaza relentlessly in reprisal could not be justified either.UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, asked specifically about the Trump proposal, said “any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.””It is vital that we stay true to the bedrock of international law. It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”After an international outcry, Trump administration officials tried Wednesday to walk back the Trump proposal, saying any displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza would be temporary while the largely destroyed territory is rebuilt. Trump had also not committed to deploying US troops to carry out his plan, they said.Guterres insisted on the idea of a two-state solution with Israel and the Palestinians living side by side in peace.”Any durable peace will require tangible, irreversible and permanent progress toward the two-State solution, an end to the occupation, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with Gaza as an integral part,’ he said.To that end, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour called for a “successful” international conference at the United Nations to discuss the issue, scheduled for June and co-chaired by Saudia Arabia and France. Even with large parts of Gaza’s north in ruins, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned since late January, under a fragile truce that has halted more than 15 months of war.Gaza’s north, which includes Gaza City, has been devastated by Israel’s military offensive launched after Hamas’s 2023 attack, with homes, hospitals, schools and almost all civil infrastructure flattened.Mansour reiterated Palestinians’ rejection of Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.”We are not going to leave Gaza,” he said. “It is part of our homeland, and we don’t have a homeland other than the State of Palestine.”He added that Palestinians would be “delighted” to return to their homes in present-day Israel from where they were “kicked from.”

Ten “high-threat” migrants have arrived at Guantanamo and are being held at the notorious American base in Cuba, the Pentagon said Wednesday, with the White House later identifying them as members of a powerful gang.President Donald Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” at the base, which is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but which also has a history of holding migrants.”These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Pentagon said in a statement, referring to them as “illegal aliens.””US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination,” it said.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said the flight carrying the migrants had arrived the previous day and that they were “10 members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua.”The Trump administration has launched what it has cast as a major effort to combat illegal migration that has also included immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed. Conditions there have prompted outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety.”

Guatemala’s leader promised Wednesday to allow a surge of deportation flights from the United States as he won a show of support from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a boost after simmering tensions in the Central American country.President Bernardo Arevalo, who has been undermined by an elite that has connections to US conservatives, promised to allow a 40 percent increase in flights repatriating Guatemalans and others from third countries, addressing a key priority for President Donald Trump.”We’re not just neighbors. We’re allies — we’re friends — and I think that will be evidenced by the work that we’ve done here,” Rubio told a joint news conference with Arevalo.He also said the US Army Corps of Engineers would visit Guatemala to help develop plans for a more modern port.Rubio, a Cuban-American and fierce opponent of Latin American leftists, has quickly sought in his new role as the top US diplomat to bolster ties with the region’s conservatives.Arevalo is no ideological soulmate but he has been eager to avoid friction with the new Trump administration.He told Rubio he was committed to work “comprehensively and jointly to guarantee regional stability, the dignity of our peoples and the security of our countries.”Arevalo specified Wednesday his country — a major source of migration — would accept both “returning nationals, and foreigners” who will be sent on to their respective countries.The approach is a stark contrast to Colombia, whose leftist leader demanded “dignified” treatment for deportees and sent planes to repatriate migrants after refusing US military flights with shackled people on board — sparking a brief tariff tussle with Trump.- Praise for Guatemalan democracy -Arevalo is the son of a former president and pulled off a surprise victory in 2023 on a platform of reform and rooting out corruption in one of the region’s poorest countries.He immediately faced pushback from Guatemala’s entrenched conservative elite which sought to prevent him from taking office.Right-wing parties made allegations of electoral fraud, without providing evidence, and found support in Washington from elements of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement that refused to acknowledge his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.Rubio, however, offered full backing to Arevalo and said they discussed the value of democracy over a dinner Tuesday in Guatemala City’s old town.”I would like to commend you for your commitment to democracy and to institutions,” Rubio said.Guatemala also appeals to the Trump administration as it is the most populous country that still recognizes Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China.Rubio, a longtime hawk on China, said the United States will “do all we can to facilitate more Taiwanese investment in the economy of Guatemala.”- Root causes -Guatemala is one of the largest origins of migration to the United States after decades of poverty, violence and political instability.According to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry, some 3.2 million Guatemalans live in the United States — hundreds of thousands of them undocumented.Last year, the country received 508 flights from the United States with 61,680 deportees.The United States under previous administrations sought to address the root causes of migration through on-the-ground support.However, the Trump administration said Tuesday it was sending home nearly all officers around the world from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which contributed some $178 million to projects in Guatemala in 2023.Rubio defended the decision, despite a furor from anti-poverty advocates who say that people will die, and Democratic lawmakers in Washington who say the United States is ceding leadership to China.Rubio said the Trump administration would maintain foreign assistance but have a review “from the bottom up” to see which programs meet the US national interest.He will head late Wednesday to the Dominican Republic, whose president, Luis Abinader, has championed a Trump-style hard line on chronically unstable and impoverished Haiti, including by starting work on a wall and ramping up deportations.