The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that this act recalls the darkest episodes of human history, from slavery to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, citing the Alien Enemy Act of 1798.

It pointed out that this executive order is an anachronistic regulation that not only violates fundamental and existing laws of the United States, “but also violates the international legal order in terms of human rights” and other agreements and principles of world legality.

The statement denounced that its attempted application constitutes a crime against humanity and a dangerous precedent for our entire region, and affirmed that “the unity and solidarity of our America is the only possible response to this attempt at segregation, persecution and massive dispossession”.

The Bolivarian government said that the Venezuelan migrants who have crossed our borders in search of an alternative way of life have done so for economic reasons, as a result of the hardship caused by the criminal blockade of the economy, “to carry out their plans for regime change in Venezuela”.

It declared that the vast majority of migrants are hard-working, dignified and honest men and women, not terrorists, not criminals, not “foreign enemies”, but victims.

The Foreign Ministry strongly denounced that their compatriots in the United States “are being persecuted in their workplaces, schools, churches, hospitals and public spaces”.

It repudiated that María Corina Machado, Julio Borges, Carlos Paparoni, Leopoldo López and others, who make up the criminal core of the Venezuelan right-wing that have been requesting time and again the application of unilateral coercive measures against the Venezuelan people and boast as one of their greatest achievements the application of this law against migrants.

mh/las/jcd