The US State Department recently issued warnings urging US citizens in Venezuela to depart as soon as possible as the country was assigned a Level 4 travel advisory: ‘Do Not Travel.’
According to the State Department, the Level 4 travel advisory was issued due to “severe risks to Americans including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”
Venezuela now joins an infamous group of nearly two dozen countries the State Department deems too dangerous for US citizens to travel to.
“More U.S. nationals are currently wrongfully detained in Venezuela than in any other country,” explains a release from the US Embassy in Caracas. “U.S. citizens in Venezuela should depart immediately.”
The State Department warned Americans should “not travel to Venezuela for any reason,” arguing that visiting Venezuela puts US citizens at “a significant and growing risk of wrongful detention.”
The level 4 travel advisory designation overlaps with the expiration of oil export licenses for American companies exporting Venezuelan oil as President Donald Trump’s administration increases pressure on the Venezuelan government.
President Trump’s license cancellation effectively reimposes sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector that had been levied on Venezuela during Trump’s first term.
Former President Joe Biden lifted such sanctions in the ‘Barbados Agreement’ in exchange for assurances from Dictator Maduro that he would host free and fair elections.
Despite promises of allowing free and fair elections, the Venezuelan regime barred opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from participating in the same.
However, Machado invested her political capital into former Venezuelan Ambassador Edmundo Gonzalez, who subsequently won the presidential elections.
Subsequently, Gonzalez was forced to seek political asylum in Spain after Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro’s regime rejected the election results and threatened to arrest him.
Since then, Maduro has intensely persecuted political dissidents and even threatened Machado herself.
In the latest faceoff between Machado and Maduro, the former managed to decrease Venezuelans’ participation in staged regional elections to 12.5% after issuing a national call for boycotting the “farce” elections.
