WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) -The United States and Venezuela on Tuesday each warned their respective citizens against traveling to the other country, with the U.S. citing the risk of wrongful detention in the South American nation and Venezuela saying its citizens are victims of systematic rights abuses in the U.S.
“U.S. citizens in Venezuela face a significant and growing risk of wrongful detention,” the State Department said in a statement.
The department has assigned Venezuela, where there is no U.S. Embassy or consulate, its highest travel alert – Level 4: Do Not Travel. It cited risks including torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, unfair law enforcement practices, violent crime, civil unrest and inadequate healthcare.
The U.S. has said there are Americans being unfairly held in Venezuela. One man was freed this month, while others were released in January.
Venezuela, meanwhile, issued a travel alert for the U.S. and urged its citizens living there to leave.
“Venezuelans in the United States are victims of a systematic pattern of abuses of their human rights, being arbitrarily detained, separated from their families and transported to concentration camps in third countries,” Venezuela’s foreign minister Yvan Gil said on Telegram.
Venezuela has decried President Donald Trump’s use of a 1798 law to deport hundreds of migrants from the U.S. to El Salvador’s most notorious prison.
The U.S. Supreme Court this month kept in place its block on Trump’s use of the law, faulting his administration for seeking to remove migrants without adequate legal process.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Editing by Katharine Jackson and Andrea Ricci)
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