Venezuela won't take its criminals back. So why does Biden keep taking them?

Laken Hope Riley shouldn’t be a household name.

Laken, a 22-year-old nursing student at Georgia’s Augusta University, had a bright future ahead of her. Then her life was horrifically cut short last month by a Venezuelan national, who shouldn’t have been in the U.S. to begin with.

Laken was simply collateral damage in the Biden administration’s deadly political calculus. Laken’s alleged murderer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, unlawfully entered the U.S. near El Paso, Texas, in September 2022. He should have been stopped and removed. But like other Venezuelan nationals, he became part of Biden’s misguided catch-and-release experiment at the border, which has resulted in the avoidable bloodshed of many innocent Americans.

Ibarra was paroled into the interior of the U.S. according do Biden's policy, pending a review of his immigration case. Subsequently, he committed a series of crimes in the U.S., including endangering a child and shoplifting, before his Riley's murder.

Regarding illegal immigration, we hear people say all the time, “Send them back to where they came from,” or “Don’t let them in to begin with.” Due to the Biden administration’s choices, these solutions are not available.

Very simply, Venezuela doesn’t want its criminals back, and Biden has proven perfectly content with that. He is bowing down to dictator Nicolas Maduro in this regard.

For years, the U.S. did not regularly conduct repatriation flights to Venezuela, due to strained relations and concerns about human rights abuses by the Venezuelan regime. Then, in October 2023, a deal was reached for Venezuela to begin accepting repatriation flights from the U.S.

After the initial deal was struck, the U.S. sent home about 1,800 Venezuelans on 15 flights over four months — a mere fraction of the half-million Venezuelans who have been encountered at the southern border since Joe Biden took office. The repatriation flights were seen as a critical warning to Venezuelans that if they crossed the U.S. border illegally, they would face deportation. And indeed, at first, there was a dramatic decrease in Venezuelans encountered at the border after the first repatriation flights took place, according to CBP data.

But in February 2024, the Maduro regime halted the repatriation flights in retaliation for Biden’s imposition of sanctions against Venezuela’s gold industry and a new threat to reimpose sanctions against its oil industry. (The sanctions came in response to Maduro's threat to invade Guyana, a U.S. ally, his arrest of opposition figures and disqualification of political opponents.)

Venezuela’s decision also shut the door on Mexico’s deportations to Venezuela, which had resumed only in late December 2023. Previously, Mexico had been flying migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border to cities in the south in an attempt to discourage the surge of Venezuelan caravans to the United States.

So, the question is, what can be done?

The answer is simple. Biden can initiate a moratorium on all Venezuelan migration until the Maduro regime agrees to cooperate with deportation requests.

For starters, he can use Section 212 (f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states, “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

Simply put, Biden could end the entry of illegal aliens, or specifically Venezuelans, today. Instead, he is callously and consciously refusing to do so.

If Biden fails to do this, then Riley’s family will not be grieving alone. More bright, young futures will be destroyed, and more of our country’s children will become household names.

Troy Nehls represents the 22nd District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives. Greg Sindelar is chief executive officer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.