Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ordered an extension of the partial border shutdown with Colombia and said his government would send another 3,000 troops to the border area to tackle drug smuggling.
Venezuela announced the closure of a crossing in the state of Zulia and declared an emergency in three border cities, reported BBC. On Aug. 22, Maduro had declared a state of emergency in border areas near Colombia following an attack by drug traffickers and criminal gangs that left four people injured.
Maduro blamed illegal Colombian migrants, cross border drug smugglings and Colombian criminal gangs for the poor state of his country's economy.
The border crisis has caused a diplomatic stand-off between Maduro's social administration and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos' center-right government, according to Reuters.
"Venezuela is mistaken in thinking that closing the frontier will improve the situation," Colombia's Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo said on Tuesday, according to Wall Street Journal.
The Venezuelan border campaign marked the fleeing or deportation of more than 20,000 Colombians in the past two weeks, per United Nations figures, according to LA Times. Nearly 1,400 Colombians have been deported and nearly 19,000 have fled from country's western borders.
"They're not officially deported. But according to many of them, soldiers are showing up at their door and saying, 'You have to leave,'" said Fabrizio Hochschild, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Bogotá, according to Wall Street Journal.
