May 10, 2025
Repatriated Venezuelan migrant with her child at the Simón Bolívar Intl. Airport. Photo: VTV.
This Friday morning, Yuliannis Blanca Ascanio and her five-year-old son Caleb Tovar arrived in Venezuela on a Return to the Homeland Plan flight. They were among the 168 Venezuelan nationals who returned to the country from the US on Friday, May 9, landing at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in La Guaira state. There, Yuliannis Blanca Ascanio complained to Venezuelan government authorities about the attempted abduction of her son by US authorities.
The information was made public by the Venezuelan minister for the Interior, Citizen Security and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, during the program Sin truco ni maña, which he hosts alongside National Assembly Deputy Tania Díaz. “She [Yuliannis Blanca Ascanio] was detained for eight months and separated from her child,” Cabello reported. “They took the child from her, they gave him to a foster family. They tried to deport her on previous flights without the child, but she refused. She fought until they gave her the child back.”
“This borders on perversion, on wickedness against children,” he said. “They send children to a family that does not know them, a family that wants to treat them as slaves.”
Cabello learned the story of the family through a report by Minister of the Penitentiary Service Julio García Zerpa, who was among the authority figures who received the repatriates.
Reading the report, Cabello explained that Ascanio fought legally in the United States to recover her son. “I imagine that she went to some court, and one of these brave judges in the United States made the decision,” he said.
The abduction of Venezuelan children has been repeatedly denounced by the Venezuelan government. On May 2, a 17-year-old girl arrived in Venezuela on a repatriation flight from El Paso, Texas, and reported the abduction of her two younger siblings by US authorities.
“A 17-year-old girl came alone, separated from her siblings,” Cabello condemned at that time. “The family consisted of the father, the mother, and three children. She is the oldest of the children. They grabbed the father and sent him to a place. They took the mother and sent her to another place. They grabbed this girl and sent her to another place, and it is supposed that the younger children are together in another place.”
Another such case involves Maikelys Espinoza Bernal, a two-year-old girl, who was separated from her parents on May 14, 2024, when they were detained by US immigration authorities.
The mother of the baby girl, Yorelis Bernal, was forced by the US administration to board a deportation flight to Venezuela, while the child was sent to a foster home. The father, Maiker Espinoza, was illegally sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador.
Source: Orinoco Tribune