US responds to Venezuela’s UN crackdown
The Washington Watch is our weekly update on key developments in bilateral relations between the United States of America and Latin American countries. Please find today’s article below.
Venezuela: On 16 February the US embassy in Venezuela responded to the “retaliatory decision” by Venezuela’s government led by President Nicolás Maduro the previous day to temporarily suspend the operations of the local branch of the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and expel its staff. According to the US embassy, this decision was made in response to an OHCHR report expressing “profound concern” over the detention of human rights activist Rocío San Miguel, president of the Venezuelan human rights NGO Control Ciudadano, who was charged with crimes including terrorism on 12 February. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil released a statement on 15 February asking OHCHR staff “to leave the country within the next 72 hours, until they rectify in front of the international community their colonialist and abusive attitude which violates the UN Charter”. Michèle Taylor, US Permanent Representative to the UN Human Rights Council responded on social media that the US was “alarmed” by the “retaliatory decision” to suspend operations of the OHCHR and expel its staff. US Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols also reacted on social media, writing that: “The expulsion of UN Human Rights staff from Venezuela is alarming. Escalating intimidation of dissenting voices exacerbates Venezuela’s humanitarian, political, and economic crises.”?US-based NGO Human Rights Watch has also condemned the decision, issuing a statement on 16 February calling on “States, the UN Human Rights Council, and the broader international community to insist on the reestablishment of an effective OHCHR presence in [Venezuela] and the release of all those arbitrarily detained for political reasons”.?
Haiti: On 14 February US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that the previous day, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Operations Assistant Director David Magdycz and Haiti’s justice minister, Emmelie Prophete-Milcé, had signed a memorandum of cooperation to formally establish the Haiti Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit (TCIU). The TCIU will facilitate information exchanges between law enforcement partners in the US and Haiti, enhancing both nations’ abilities to investigate and prosecute those involved in transnational criminal activities, according to an ICE press release. The same press release describes TCIUs as critical in “efforts to build partner nation capacity and combat transnational criminal activity at the source, preventing its entry into the US”. The HSI’s TCIU programme currently partners with 17 countries, including Ecuador, which formed a new TCIU with the US in 2018. Composed of vetted foreign law enforcement, prosecutors, and customs, immigration, and intelligence officials, TCIUs lend operational support to HSI personnel (without holding law enforcement authority in their host nations) at foreign posts. In collaboration, the HSI and TCIUs “develop and expand investigations overseas in compliance with host country laws, agreements, treaties, and US mission policies”. “Establishing the TCIU is a pivotal moment in our collective efforts to combat transnational crime and ensure the safety and security of both our nations,” said Magdycz.
Mexico: On 15 February the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York charged Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada -?the leader of the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation (DTO) - with conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl in the US. This indictment,?the fifth that US prosecutors have filed against El Mayo, was issued before a federal court in Brooklyn by prosecutor Breon Peace of the Eastern District of New York, adding to previous charges for crimes such as directing a criminal organisation, murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking. The Sinaloa DTO is “the largest, most powerful drug trafficking organisation in the world,” said US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Acting Assistant Director Ivan Arvelo in an official press release. In the same statement US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram identified fentanyl as “the deadliest drug threat Americans have ever faced” and the Sinaloa DTO as “the largest trafficker of fentanyl into the United States”. From 1989 to 2024, El Mayo generated billions of dollars in profits through importing and distributing massive quantities of narcotics, according to the indictment. In 2010, the US froze El Mayo’s assets, and Mexico extradited his son Jesús Vicente Zambada-Niebla to the US, after arresting him the previous year. The prosecution has increased the reward?from US$5m to US$15m for anyone who provides information resulting in El Mayo’s arrest. Of the Sinaloa DTO’s other leaders, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera was arrested in Mexico in 2014, extradited to the US in 2017, and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years in 2019. Peace affirmed that the indictment “demonstrates our firm resolve to bring [Zambada] to justice, just as we did with his former co-conspirator El Chapo, and just as we will continue to do to all those who traffic drugs and seek to profit from the devastation inflicted on our communities”.
Uruguay: On 15 February Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Omar Paganini signed the Artemis Accords, which are rooted in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which enforces the peaceful purpose of cooperative space exploration, and are co-led for the US by the State Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Uruguay becomes the 36th signatory of the Accords, “underscoring its commitment to the peaceful, safe, and transparent exploration and use of outer space”, according to the US State Department. Paganini signed the agreement during the second US-Uruguay annual bilateral inter-ministerial dialogue in Washington, DC. At the ceremony, the US delegation commended Uruguay’s leadership within the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (Apep), an initiative launched by US President Joe Biden in June 2022. “Our growing high-tech commercial ties and commitment to democracy are the foundation of our strong relationship”, the State Department’s official statement read. “Together, we will continue to uphold the principles of the Artemis Accords and work towards a future of cooperation and exploration beyond Earth’s bounds”. Established in 2020, the Accords prescribe “a practical set of principles to guide space exploration”, according to the statement. Uruguay becomes the sixth Latin American country to sign the Accords after Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico.
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