Buenos Aires Herald 
Argentine lawmakers Francisco Paoltroni (from ruling coalition La Libertad Avanza) and Alejandro Bongiovanni (PRO) were deported from Venezuela after arriving at the Caracas airport ahead of Sunday’s elections, in which President Nicolás Maduro will seek reelection for a third six-year term.
Paoltroni and Bongiovanni had been invited to Venezuela by key opposition figure María Corina Machado, who was banned from participating in the election, and presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who replaced her on the ticket.
“I am no longer uncommunicated. I am being deported,” Bongiovanni wrote on X on Friday evening. “They got me on a flight to Panama that is about to take off. It was worth trying it.”
After landing in Panama almost three hours later, he gave more details about what happened upon arriving in Caracas. He said that officers from the airport police took away his passport and made him stay in a “small room” for a couple of hours.
“They wouldn’t let me use my phone or sit down, but they were also not asking me any questions,” he recalled, adding that he was eventually led to a plane on the other end of the airport. According to the deputy, the only words they said to him were: “You are not welcome in this country. Get on the plane.”
Bongiovanni also thanked Foreign Minister Diana Mondino for reaching out to him.
Paoltroni had a similar experience. “Immigration control deported us without any explanation or reason,” he said in a video recorded on a plane and posted on X on Friday night. “They put us on the same plane we had arrived on.”
In the post, he wrote that he had been escorted by “seven highly armed soldiers” and that airport authorities had taken his passport. “Maduro’s regime is doing everything it can to avoid losing. This situation is a clear violation of our rights and evidence of the repression and control that the government imposes on citizens and visitors.”
“When I asked what was happening, they said the government of Venezuela would not let us in,” he told the Herald from his home in Formosa. “We didn’t want it to escalate to a violent situation.”
In a document to LATAM Airlines Paoltroni shared with the Herald, immigration authorities explained they were deporting him and other people on the grounds that they didn’t meet the criteria to enter the country as tourists.
News of the first Argentine to be deported broke out on Thursday when reporter Jorge Pizarro alerted that he was being banned from entering Venezuela. He was also made to stay in a room and was questioned several times. Like Bongiovanni, he had to pass through Panama before returning, given that direct flights between Argentina and Venezuela have been banned by Maduro. Paoltroni, on the other hand, flew there via Peru.
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On Friday, President Javier Milei called Machado to send his support ahead of Sunday. “I had a pleasant conversation with Javier Milei today,” Machado wrote on X. “I thanked him for the support and commitment from his government and the [Argentine] Foreign Ministry during these months that have been so hard for Venezuelans and our people in the campaign.”
Milei, who is currently in France, replied to her post, saying that he would “always be beside the Venezuelan people in this fight for freedom.”
