Following days of opposition protests, three unnamed diplomats were declared persona non grata by Maduro during a televised address on Sunday night. On Monday Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Elias Jaua announced that the US diplomats in question were vice consuls Breann Marie McCusker and Jeffrey Elsen, and Kristofer Lee Clark, who holds the rank of second secretary at the US consulate.

Jaua said during a press conference that the three officials had assisted “groups that seek to generate violence in the country,” and that they had 48 hours to leave.

As evidence, Jaua cited email correspondence from US embassy officials in recent years that supposedly call for funding from Washington to support Venezuelan student groups, AP reported.

He added that the diplomats sought contacts “for the training, the financing and the creation of youth organizations to foment violence.”

"It's a group of US functionaries who are in the universities. We've been watching them having meetings in the private universities for two months. They work in visas," Maduro stated Sunday in a nationally televised broadcast.

Last Wednesday, over 10,000 people poured onto the streets of Caracas to peacefully protest their growing worries, such as the country's high murder rate and a record-breaking 56 percent inflation.

At the end of Wednesday’s opposition protests, a group of students battled with security forces and pro-government militias, leaving three people dead. Maduro’s government blamed the violence on Harvard-educated opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, whom Maduro accuses of leading a US-backed "fascist" plot to oust the socialist government.

“There is a fascist group that abuses public freedoms and democracy to play politics and prepare to overthrow the government,” Maduro said.

The US State Department responded Monday, calling Maduro’s allegations “baseless and false.”

“As we have long said, Venezuela's political future is for the Venezuelan people to decide,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, according to AFP.

Lopez and allies announced Monday they will reroute their opposition protest on Tuesday away from the central plaza in Caracas to avoid clashing with a simultaneous pro-government march called by Maduro.