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Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has officially returned to Venezuela after about 10 months out of the country.

Getting into it: In a post on X, Machado posted a pic announcing her arrival with the caption “I’m here. With you.” She made her first appearance at a church in Lara state’s capital, Barquisimeto, roughly 220 miles from Caracas, then set off for the capital in a convoy. Tens of thousands of supporters lined the highways along the way, stretching the trip to eight hours.

“This country is giving lessons to everyone,” she told the crowd as the convoy rolled into Caracas Sunday night.

Her team hasn’t said how she got in, but Reuters, citing a person with direct knowledge of the trip, reported that the US, Panama and Colombia helped arrange it and that Trump approved it. Machado’s advisers say she failed to get back into the country seven times in recent months, including three times in one day in late September. She slipped out in December to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, after spending most of the prior year in hiding following the 2024 election, a vote most observers believe her movement won.

Despite that report, Trump told reporters Sunday he hadn’t heard about her return, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was “the direct result of the US-supported reconciliation talks.”

Since the US military seized Nicolás Maduro in January, Washington has worked with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president and Machado’s longtime rival, and kept Machado on the sidelines. Trump said in January that Machado didn’t have the support inside Venezuela to lead. Rodríguez, meanwhile, has gone along with nearly everything the administration has asked for, including an August deal giving the US a controlling stake in more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves.

This all comes as Rodríguez still hasn’t set a date for the elections she promised at the UN in September, with Machado pushing for a vote by July 2027 and Trump saying the country isn’t ready yet.