(Bloomberg) -- In a whirlwind trip, an envoy of President Donald Trump undid years of Biden administration diplomacy in Venezuela and started fresh with its President Nicolás Maduro, a shift that could have repercussions from migration to the oil market.
Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special situations, flew to Caracas Friday, shook Maduro’s hand, and returned with six American prisoners and a promise that Venezuela would accept its deported migrants for the first time in almost a year, including members of the feared Tren de Aragua criminal gang.
“It’s like US-Venezuela relations went from zero to a hundred miles an hour overnight,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at Washington’s Atlantic Council.
Maduro, whose international legitimacy was deeply damaged after the US, the European Union, and most countries in the region refused to recognize his reelection, went to great lengths to publicize the meeting with Trump’s envoy. State-controlled media published photos and videos of the meeting at the Miraflores national palace, in which a smiling Maduro showed Grenell the sword of Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar, placed right between the Venezuela and US flags.
It was a stark contrast to a 2022 high-level meeting in Caracas with Biden’s National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan Gonzalez. The government provided no photos back then. This time, Maduro’s government even redistributed an image originally published by an opposition local media, showing the head of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, and Foreign Affairs Minister Yván Gil receiving Grenell and the rest of the US delegation as they landed in the capital.
Grenell’s visit delivered a clear win for Trump, who said Maduro even agreed to supply the transportation back home for the deportees. “It is so good to have the Venezuela Hostages back home,” he added in a Truth Social post Saturday morning. “We are in the process of removing record numbers of illegal aliens from all Countries.”
It remains to be seen whether Maduro will keep his promise to receive deportees, which would give Trump a victory in his campaign to return undocumented migrants to their home countries. An agreement with Venezuela would open a path for his administration to deport hundreds of thousands of people back to a country that’s been a major source of migration to the US in recent years, because of Maduro’s autocratic regime and dire economic struggles.
The meeting also appears to have represented a victory for Maduro. Although he didn’t obtain a publicly disclosed pledge in return, a visit by a high-level Trump official was a visible sign that the US is ready to deal with him again despite evidence that he stole last July’s presidential election. President Joe Biden had applied sanctions to regime members and recognized opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez as the real president-elect.
The license that allows Chevron Corp. to operate in Venezuela was automatically renewed on Saturday for six more months. The permit has been renewed the first day of each month since it was issued in November 2022. The encounter Friday and the license renewal suggests the US is likely to continue to allow the driller to produce oil in Venezuela, a permit that has been lucrative for Maduro and the US company.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who begins a Latin American trip this weekend, has questioned whether Chevron’s Venezuela license should continue to be renewed, a sign of possible differences within the Trump administration on the issue.
The meeting was a blow to the Venezuelan opposition led by María Corina Machado, who’s in hiding and was counting on Trump’s support as Maduro prepares to further consolidate power. During his first administration, Trump led the region’s failed efforts to unseat Maduro, recognizing then-National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the country’s rightful leader. Venezuela will hold early regional and legislative elections this year, letting Maduro tighten his grip.
The meeting seems to have left Machado on the sidelines, and now Venezuela’s opposition faces the challenge of deepening ties with the Trump administration, Ramsey said.
“Back channels with Maduro are not inherently a bad thing from the perspective of advancing a democratic transition, but it remains to be seen exactly how this communication channel will be used,” Ramsey said.
A new beginning
Following the meeting Friday, state television distributed roughly seven minutes of images of the encounter at Miraflores, showing both Maduro and Grenell smiling while shaking hands. A beaming Rodríguez, who is Maduro’s head negotiator, looked on in what the state television reporter called a “historic moment.” A translator was seen on the images walking alongside Maduro and Grenell during the encounter.
In a statement Friday night, the Venezuelan government said the meeting had been requested by the US on Thursday and Maduro accepted.
Before the encounter with Maduro, Grenell held a meeting with Rodríguez and his sister, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.
“We have taken a first step, hopefully it can be sustained, we want to sustain it,” Maduro said after the meeting with Grenell. “Let’s start a new agenda, let’s go to a new beginning.”
