In the blitz of coverage about those private planes that carried dozens of migrants to

Martha's vineyard last month, there's this one fact I can't stop thinking about.

It's about where these migrants were coming from.

Not Mexico, not Guatemala, but Venezuela.

There are seven countries between the United States and Venezuela.

That means the people on those planes were at the end of a very long trip.

Cindy Arnson, the New Wilson Center's Latin America program, she wasn't surprised by

who was on this plane.

She says, over the last few years, 20 percent of Venezuela's population has fled.

Sometimes they're coming directly from Venezuela.

Sometimes they're coming from other countries to which they had migrated to leave Venezuela.

The reality that people need to focus on is that the numbers of people from Venezuela,

from Nicaragua, or from Cuba, all left-wing dictatorships that are opposed, not just by

the Biden administration, but by the Republican Party, by Ron DeSantis himself, the governor

of Florida.

Those are the countries that have seen a surge in arrivals at the U.S. border.

Did it strike you as kind of ironic?

It's probably something that Governor Santos was not paying a lot of attention to.

To understand why so many people are fleeing Venezuela in particular, just go check out

the State Department's website.

The U.S. government explicitly advises against going to Venezuela yourself due to rampant

crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, and kidnapping, among other things.

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