- The U.S. State Department issued a warning on May 27, designating Venezuela as a “Do Not Travel” destination due to risks like wrongful detention, torture, kidnapping and violent crime under President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
- U.S. citizens face heightened risks of arbitrary detention based solely on nationality, with Venezuela holding more wrongfully detained Americans than any other country. Detainees often endure torture and years without legal recourse.
- The absence of a functioning U.S. embassy in Venezuela leaves detained Americans without consular assistance, and authorities frequently deny notifications or access to detainees.
- The advisory coincided with the release of U.S. Air Force veteran Joseph St. Clair, detained since November 2024. His family credited the Trump administration and envoy Ric Grenell for securing his freedom, though details remain unclear.
- The warning emphasizes that all Americans in Venezuela – including dual nationals, visa holders or those visiting family – are vulnerable to arrest. The State Department urges immediate departure due to the lack of diplomatic safeguards.
(Natural News)—The U.S. Department of State has issued an advisory against traveling to the South American nation of Venezuela, citing risks of wrongful detention under the leadership of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The department’s travel advisory issued Tuesday, May 27, put Venezuela on the “Do Not Travel” designation. There is no U.S. embassy operating in Venezuela, leaving American citizens with no recourse in case they are detained without due process in the socialist nation.
According to the advisory, Americans in Venezuela face grave risks like “wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, unfair law enforcement practices, violent crime, civil unrest and inadequate healthcare.” U.S. embassies in countries around the South American country and in those with direct flights to it have also released similar alerts, it added. (Related: Security warning and travel advisory issued by U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas following 18 murders reported in January.)
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce also highlighted the alarming trend of Americans being increasingly targeted for detention in Venezuela, based solely on their nationality. “More U.S. nationals are currently wrongfully detained in Venezuela than in any other country,” she told reporters Tuesday. Bruce also noted that detainees face torture and are often held for years without legal recourse.
Several Americans wrongfully detained by the Maduro government
The alert was issued on the same day as Caracas’ release of American national Joseph St. Clair from its custody. The Air Force veteran, who had been detained by the Maduro government since November 2024, was one of a handful of Americans wrongfully imprisoned by the socialist regime.
A statement by St. Clair’s family confirmed his release. “This news came suddenly, and we are still processing it – but we are overwhelmed with joy and gratitude,” said Joseph’s parents Scott and Patti. The family also thanked the Trump administration for securing Joseph’s release.
A report by Newsmax mentioned that Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Ric Grenell secured the Air Force veteran’s release during talks with Maduro. Details on the arrangement were not immediately clear, however.
It is not clear when Joseph will return to U.S. soil, though the fates of other Americans imprisoned in Venezuela remain uncertain. According to the State Department advisory, Venezuelan authorities routinely deny consular access and withhold notifications of detentions, leaving families in the dark.
The warning extends beyond traditional risks like crime and unrest. It explicitly cautions that even dual nationals, visa holders or those visiting family are not safe from arbitrary arrest.
“Every American is at risk of being detained by Maduro’s regime,” the advisory states, urging all U.S. citizens in Venezuela to leave immediately. The absence of diplomatic presence means stranded travelers have no lifeline – a scenario that mirrors the consequences of unchecked authoritarianism.
Watch this Newsmax report about Special Envoy Ric Grenell’s return to the U.S. with Joseph St. Clair in tow.
More related stories:
- Advisory: Do not travel to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.
- US government steals airplane that Iran sold to Venezuela, claiming alleged sanctions violations.
- Is the controversial election in Venezuela a harbinger of things to come for America in November?
Sources include:
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.