While portrayed by the Trump administration as hardened criminals, the Venezuelans returning to their home country in the deportation flights from the United States and Mexico are being welcomed back with open arms as prodigal sons and daughters — ironically, by the man in charge of the repressive apparatus that initially forced many of them to flee.

For the most part, the hundreds of migrants arriving have been allowed to reunite with their families after officials confirmed that they are not wanted criminals. In fact, the Venezuelans arriving on deportation flights out of Texas and out of the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have received a warm welcome from Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who has reiterated on state television that those deported have been falsely labeled as dangerous criminals or being members of the nefarious Tren de Aragua gang.

“They were taken to Guantanamo without having committed any type of legal infraction,” Cabello told reporters at the airport while receiving a group of 177 Venezuelans the U.S. had originally sent to the Navy base in Cuba. “All of them will have a second chance to rebuild their lives here.”

Of the total of 609 Venezuelan migrants who have arrived in in the South American country since the deportation flights began two weeks ago, only 56 had at some point been investigated by police in Venezuela — although not necessarily charged — under suspicion of having committed some sort of crime, Venezuelan police sources told the Miami Herald.

And of those, only a small fraction were taken into custody on arrival in Caracas because they have been charged and have an active warrant for their arrest. While the number of those arrested after their return to Venezuela was not available, sources told the Herald the number is very small.

But being wanted for arrest in Caracas doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has committed what would be considered a crime in another country. Under the Maduro regime, dissidents are often labeled as enemies of the state and frequently charged with terrorism.

Among those believed to have been incarcerated soon after setting foot back in the country are two former members of the Venezuelan armed forces who broke with the Nicolás Maduro regime and had been attempting to obtain political asylum in the United States.

Those who fled Venezuela to escape from persecution and economic hardship they attribute to the regime have so far been personally greeted inside their returning flights by Cabello, the interior minister considered by many to be the regime’s top henchman, and the one in charge of running the country’s repression apparatus.

Cabello – who has been charged in the U.S. with leading Venezuela’s drug-trafficking Cartel de los Soles and has a $25 million reward for his capture – has turned the repatriation of the deported Venezuelans into a media circus, showing images of them meeting with family members in his television show "Con el Mazo Dando," Hitting with the Club.

In the images shown in state TV, the returning Venezuelans are driven to their families’ residence in patrol SUVs belonging to the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, the same vehicles used by the feared political police agency to conduct its arrests.

The agency and its sister entity, the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, have repeatedly been accused by multiple international organizations of systematically torturing dissidents and of extrajudicial killings. In an infamous case that garnered international attention, the body of an opposition leader was thrown out of the 10th floor of the intelligence headquarters building in an attempt to conceal that he had actually died after being tortured.

Experts in Venezuela said that deportees returning home have so far been allowed to move freely inside Venezuela, except for the few that were actually sought by the police.

Following the unrest caused by the regime’s announcement last year that Maduro had won the presidential election in July last year’s presidential elections — a claim seen as fraudulent by the U.S., a large number of other countries and by 90% of Venezuelans — more than 2,000 people were arrested and many of them charged with attempting to overthrow the government. Among those imprisoned are opposition leaders, human-rights activists, journalists and several minors.

As the Trump administration gears up to potentially deport hundreds of thousands Venezuelans who have been beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, one of the main concerns on the minds of many migrants, advocates and experts is that the U.S. will be handing the Maduro regime on a silver platter many of the people who were forced to leave the country because they had been fighting to restore democracy.

“By being deported, they are being handed over to criminals that perceive them as enemies and that are willing to inflict them with extreme suffering,” said José Antonio Colina, president of the Venezuelan exile group VEPPEX. “Once they arrive at the airport, they run the risk of being immediately detained by Maduro’s intelligence services and be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, specifically tortured, by those who consider them enemies.”

What Cabello, the experts and most political dissidents agree on is that most of those facing the threat of deportation are not members or ever had affiliations with Tren de Aragua, a gang that was born out of the Tocorón prison in Venezuela’s Aragua state.

Many of the members of the 2,500-strong gang have joined the massive immigration wave fleeing Venezuela and have set up shop in neighboring countries. Authorities in the region say the gang is behind a spike in criminal activities in Colombia, Perú, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Costa Rica.

Some gang members are believed to have already been detected in the United States, but experts believe that the real number is in the few dozens, which would represent a minuscule fraction of the more than 900,000 Venezuelans who currently live in the United States.

While the alleged entry of Tren de Aragua gang members into the United States became a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, officials have failed to provide evidence showing than Venezuelans who have committed crimes in the U.S. were in fact members of the gang, beyond the fact that some of the migrants had tattoos of a type reportedly used in Venezuela by confirmed gang members.

Experts said that is simply not enough evidence of membership in the gang.

“In the United States, the whole narrative concerning the Tren de Aragua has been prefabricated,” said Venezuelan crime expert Javier Ignacio Mayorca, who lives in Venezuela. “We all know that there has been a gross exaggeration enacted for political means, and that anyone responsibly looking into this cannot determine that person is a member of the gang solely because of a tattoo. That is not serious.”

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