Guaidó says he was told to either leave Colombia or be handed over to Maduro regime

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó said that before he was put on a plane bound for Miami this week he was threatened by Colombian authorities with deportation — and being turned over to the Nicolás Maduro regime, which would have imprisoned him.

“It is only thanks to the intervention of the United States that I am here … with you,” Guaidó said Thursday morning at a press conference in Miami. “When I was in Colombia, I received threats of deportation and of being turned into the hands of Maduro, who has already threatened my life, threatened my freedom and who has already assassinated political leaders, and tortured our family and team members.

“In Colombia, I also felt threatened and persecuted,” he said, adding that he was told that if he wanted to avoid being handed to the Maduro government he had to leave Colombia immediately. Guaidó said he did so with the help of the United States.

The Biden administration confirmed this week that it helped Guaidó leave Colombia.

Guaidó had crossed the border into Colombia over the weekend to talk with delegations arriving in Bogotá to participate in a forum organized by Colombian President Gustavo Petro to discuss the Venezuela crisis.

Even though until recently Guaidó was recognized by Colombia, the United States and about 50 more nations as the legitimate president of Venezuela, he was not given access to the conference and was forced to leave the country.

Guaidó, who arrived in Miami early Tuesday morning, said that for now he plans to travel to Washington and meet with senators and U.S. officials to lobby in favor of the Venezuelan cause but said he has no plans of staying and that he aims to return to his country once conditions for his safety are met.

Guaidó said Colombia’s president has clearly shown that he has picked a side in the prolonged confrontation between the Maduro regime and those seeking to establish the nation’s democracy. “He is siding with the dictatorship,” he said.

Guaido said Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva lied when he said Guaidó was planning to travel to the United States all along because he already had airline tickets for Miami. He said that the only tickets that he had were for a flight from the Colombia-Venezuela border town of Cúcuta to Bogotá, and that he was not able to use them because officials at the Cúcuta airport did not allow him to board the plane. In the end, he traveled by car to Bogotá.

Colombian government officials said Tuesday that Guaidó was deported because he had entered the country illegally and that a high-ranking U.S. official had told them of his whereabouts.

“We knew he was here because of all the noise he was making, that he was going to stage a protest. ... Naturally, immigration set out to find out what had happened. Finally, it came to be known from a high-ranking U.S. official where he was, which allowed immigration to reach him,” Leyva told reporters.

Leyva’s comments were different from the account by Petro, who hours earlier had denied that Guaidó had been forced to leave Colombia.

“Mr. Guaidó was not expelled,” Petro said on Twitter. “It is better that lies do not appear in politics. Mr. Guaidó had an agreement to travel to the US. We allow it for humanitarian reasons despite the illegal entry into the country.”

Until Petro’s election last year, Colombia was one of Guaidó’s closest supporters.

Guaidó said he decided to go to Colombia because Petro and Leyva previously had openly invited opposition members to travel to Bogotá to participate in the discussions.