Venezuela isn’t going to want back all the Venezuelans who are in this country illegally, especially the gang-bangers.

Border czar–designee Tom Homan is clearly the right guy to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitious deportation plans. But there’s one obstacle that’s out of his control.

What to do with all the Venezuelans he’s going to arrest?

Venezuela isn’t going to want them back. It’s on ICE’s list of uncooperative countries when it comes to deportation, along with Cuba, Iran, Russia, China, etc. The usual tool we’d use to force compliance is visa sanctions, as is spelled out in 8 USC 1253(d):

The Secretary of State shall order consular officers in that foreign country to discontinue granting immigrant visas or nonimmigrant visas, or both, to citizens, subjects, nationals, and residents of that country until the Attorney General notifies the Secretary that the country has accepted the alien.

But we closed our embassy in Caracas in 2019, so we’re not issuing any visas to anybody there. (Though, incredibly, the embassy website still advertises Biden’s illegal parole program for Venezuelans and others without visas to fly over the border directly to the interior of the U.S., which they do from other, safe countries.)

What’s more, flights from the U.S. to Venezuela are suspended, so we couldn’t fly them there in any case.

This is a real problem because, as ICE reported in its fiscal year 2024 report this week, it has about 1,500 Venezuelans in custody with final deportation orders and 700,000 on its non-detained docket — illegals whom Biden released into the country but who aren’t in ICE custody. This includes the Tren de Aragua gang members, once just taking over apartment complexes in Colorado (but only a handful!) who have now metastasized to 17 states.

Trump was asked about this at his press conference this week, and he said, “They’ll take them back . . . and if they don’t, they’ll be met very harshly economically.” But it’s not clear what else we can do economically, since we tightened sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports to the U.S. earlier this year, and we don’t import much else from them either. We also don’t give the country any aid that we can threaten to cut off.

We also can’t just keep the TdA gangbangers et al. in immigration detention indefinitely. In Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled that after six months, we have to release deportable aliens from detention if there’s no prospect of their removal in the foreseeable future. That was a 2001 decision, so Trump could try to take the issue back to the current Court and hope for better luck, but that’s a gamble.

Most Venezuelan illegals let in by Biden had actually been living in neighboring countries for years. So we might be able to persuade/bribe/strong-arm Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, etc., to take back those whom they’d given asylum to (before they decided to trade up by responding to Biden’s invitation to come illegally to the U.S.). Thing is, even if those countries agreed to take back the ordinary Venezuelan illegals who’d settled in their countries, no amount of pressure is going to get them to take the criminals, who are naturally the first on Homan’s list.

This is where Trump might want to make a deal with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Our relations with other countries always balance a variety of interests, and our ranking of those interests will influence our approach. We’ve never used visa sanctions (yet) against China or India, for instance, even though they are uncooperative in taking back their own citizens, because prior administrations didn’t rank the issue of deportations high enough in our relations with them.

But if Trump is serious about getting the Venezuelan gangster scum out of the country, he might be willing to consider a quid pro quo — the easing of certain sanctions in exchange for taking their own citizens back. Trump’s view of diplomacy is transactional, not ideological, so this is entirely plausible.

But Secretary of State–designate Marco Rubio’s approach to foreign relations — at least regarding Venezuela — is ideological. Would he go along with a deal to ease sanctions in exchange for deportations? We’re likely to find out.