On June 7, the U.N. Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration announced that the number of Venezuelans who had fled the country had surpassed 4 million. One million people of the fewer than 30 million remaining in what was once Latin America’s richest country had poured across its borders in just seven months. “The pace of the outflow from Venezuela,” said a statement by the two agencies, “has been staggering.”
The news didn’t get much attention in Washington. Following a failed attempt by the Venezuelan opposition to provoke a military uprising on April 30, President Trump chewed out his advisers, stopped talking about the country and moved on to his next “maximum pressure” target, Iran.
That’s a source of mounting frustration for Venezuelans and their Latin American neighbors, who don’t have the option of moving on — and who are saying their region will be facing a disaster of epic proportions within months unless Venezuela can be stabilized and the tide of refugees arrested.
