Venezuela and Uruguay have issued warnings to those of their citizens planning to visit the U.S. in the wake of two mass shootings over the weekend that killed 31 people and injured dozens more.
“We warn Venezuelans, living in or aiming to travel to the U.S., to be extra careful or to postpone their travel, given the recent proliferation of violent acts and hate crimes,” President Nicolas Maduro wrote Monday evening on Twitter.
“These growing acts of violence have found echo and sustenance in the speeches and actions impregnated with racial discrimination and hatred against migrant populations, pronounced and executed from the supremacist elite who hold political power in Washington,” Venezuela’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Just hours after Venezuela issued its travel advisory, President Trump issued an executive order freezing all assets of the Venezuelan government and prohibiting Americans from doing business with the country’s government except in special cases. In a letter to Congress, Trump cited the “continued usurpation of power by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro regime” and Venezuela’s “human rights abuses, arbitrary arrest and detention of Venezuelan citizens, curtailment of free press, and ongoing attempts to undermine Interim President Juan Guaido of Venezuela and the democratically-elected Venezuelan National Assembly” as the reasons for the embargo.
Earlier on Monday, Uruguay also issued a travel warning, advising citizens traveling to the U.S. “to avoid areas with large concentrations of people like theme parks, shopping centers, art festivals, religious events, food festivals and any kind of cultural or sporting gathering.”
Montevideo’s warning came after the U.S. issued a travel advisory for Uruguay on Friday, citing a recent increase in violent crime in the South American country.