Migrants Tell Police They Are Committing Crimes in Hopes of Being Sent Back to Venezuela

According to Chicago police, two different migrants have turned to crime in an effort to get sent back to Venezuela.

AP/Marco Ugarte, file
Migrants watch a train go past as they wait along the train tracks hoping to board a freight train heading north at Huehuetoca, Mexico. AP/Marco Ugarte, file

Two migrants arrested for allegedly committing two different crimes tell the Chicago police that they were hoping to get caught so they would be sent back to Venezuela.

First reported by CWB Chicago, in a Chicago Police Department arrest report, one migrant, Dhian Gomez-Mendoza, said that he “will do whatever it takes if that is beating up a police officer or hurting a civilian, he will do it.”

Mr. Gomez-Mendoza allegedly said that after police arrested him at  O’Hare airport on February 7. Police had sent Mr. Gomez-Mendoza to a psychiatric facility the day before, however, he returned the next day saying he was desperate to get back to Venezuela. 

Police charged him with trespassing and he was released from custody later on the seventh. The next day, police report, Mr. Gomez-Mendoza was arrested again by police at Midway International Airport, for damaging a police Segway.

The incident comes just as Venezuela announced that it is no longer taking in flights of migrants that are deported from America and Mexico. The flights came to an end in late January. America had sent around 1,800 migrants home on over a dozen flights since the government began restarting deportations in October. 

Another migrant, Jhoni Montes, was arrested on February 9 after a store reported that he and an accomplice had attempted to steal three suitcases worth more than $1,500.

According to the arrest report, Mr. Montes told officers that “he was stealing to go back to Venezuela.”  Mr. Montes was released from custody the next day and failed to appear at a court date on February 16.


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