February 3, 2026 The capture of Nicolás Maduro has opened a new and uncertain chapter for Venezuela and for the nearly 8 million Venezuelans who have rebuilt their lives abroad. This moment should engage a key question for host-country policymakers: how to sustainably address the future of their Venezuelan populations while conditions inside Venezuela remain volatile and, in many cases, inhospitable. In practice, forced or premature return risks exacerbating fragility inside Venezuela—overstretching already-weak institutions and deepening socioeconomic stress—while also fueling irregular mobility across the region rather than reducing it. The better course for countries in South America and elsewhere that host large numbers of Venezuelan migrants should be to take a measured approach, a new short read from the Migration Policy Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean Initiative argues. With nearly 3 million Venezuelans in Colombia, about 1.5 million in Peru, nearly 1 million in the United States, and significant numbers in Spain, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador, host governments should focus on well-rounded migration governance rather than prioritizing large-scale returns, analyst Diego Chaves-González notes. Offering a clear-eyed framework for navigating uncertainty while centering regional stability and migrants’ lived realities, Chaves-González makes the case for sustaining regularization and integration efforts, deepening regional coordination beyond unilateral actions or bilateral deals, and securing predictable financing for shared stability objectives. “The challenge for governments is not to wait for clarity, but to govern mobility in ways that absorb uncertainty—recognizing that integration, circularity, and delayed return are likely to define Venezuelan migration for years to come,” he writes. “In this context, migration policy is not peripheral; it is central to hemispheric stability.” Read the short read here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/post-maduro-venezuelan-migration. And read more from the Latin America and Caribbean Initiative. | 
