A Venezuelan infant who was split from her parents when they came across the US-Mexico border more than a year ago has finally been reunited with them in Caracas. Two-year-old Maikelys Espinoza Bernal arrived on Wednesday on a deportation flight, where she was greeted by First Lady Cilia Flores and afterward reunited with her mother and grandmother at the presidential palace with President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro openly thanked ex-US President Donald Trump and his envoy, Richard Grenell, for their intervention in the child’s return, referring to it as “an act of justice.” The case had been widely followed at the national level in Venezuela, with high government officials appealing to the US to release the child.
Maikelys’ mother, Yorely Bernal, was deported in April to Venezuela, and her father, Maiker Espinoza, had been previously relocated to the maximum-security CECOT prison in El Salvador in March. He is among 137 Venezuelans relocated there by the Trump administration under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Espinoza allegedly serves as a lieutenant in Venezuela’s infamous gang Tren de Aragua, as claimed by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), charged with heading grave crimes. To date, there has not been any proof shown. The charges are denigrated by Espinoza’s family as political.
DHS also charged Bernal with recruiting women to be drug smugglers and prostitutes, a charge her family vehemently denies. The parents had themselves been in detention in the US since they surrendered at the border. Their daughter had been in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement since May 2024.
Although US officials have not spoken about the conditions under which the girl returned, some observers in Venezuela surmise it could be connected with a recent tacit agreement that permitted a number of opposition leaders to travel abroad, although Caracas has not acknowledged any such deal.
