The Trump White House was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela could accelerate that country’s economic collapse and speed an exodus of millions of migrants to neighboring nations, according to three current and former U.S. government officials.
The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis delivered the classified assessments — part of a broader examination of how Venezuela’s economic implosion could affect migration in Latin America — to the White House National Security Council and the top two DHS officials in at least four reports between 2017 and 2019, the people said.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration imposed some of the harshest economic penalties in U.S. history on Venezuela in response to documented human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and corruption by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro. The sanctions are fiercely defended by proponents, who say they were a necessary response to one of the most brutal crackdowns on civilians in two decades.
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