MIAMI – More than 100 Venezuelans deported from the United States are unaccounted for after powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela just hours after their arrival, according to survivors and relatives searching for missing loved ones.
The Associated Press reported that a deportation flight from Miami landed in Venezuela on Wednesday carrying 146 Venezuelan nationals. According to ICE Flight Monitor, a project operated by Human Rights First that tracks deportation flights, the group included 19 women and seven children. After arriving, authorities transported them to a hotel in La Guaira, one of the regions hardest hit by the twin earthquakes later that day.
As rescue operations continue across the disaster zone, survivors say many deportees remain missing after the hotel collapsed during the earthquakes.
Survivors Describe Escaping Collapsed Hotel
Among those who survived was Lisbeth Portillo, 58, who said she escaped from beneath the rubble after the building collapsed.
Portillo told The Associated Press that she and roughly 20 other deportees walked several kilometers through devastated streets before reaching a Venezuelan National Guard facility, where they were finally able to contact family members.
“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried… there was no communication,” she said.
Portillo described scenes of widespread destruction, recalling people fleeing collapsed buildings barefoot or with little clothing as they searched for safety.
She said surviving the collapse felt like a second chance at life.
“I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” Portillo said, adding that she remains traumatized by the experience.
Flight Arrived Only Hours Before Earthquakes
According to ICE Flight Monitor, the deportation flight departed from Miami and arrived in Venezuela only hours before the country was struck by twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude.
Portillo said deportees were taken to Hotel Santuario La Llanada, where officials conducted medical examinations and issued identification documents. They were told they would return to their homes the following day.
She recalled stepping onto a balcony shortly before the earthquake, noticing unusually dark skies and intense heat before returning to her room.
Moments later, the building began shaking violently.
“I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’ and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” she said. “They were all screaming for help.”
A second major earthquake struck almost immediately afterward.
Portillo said she became trapped beneath a concrete beam but was eventually able to free herself as shifting debris created an escape route.
She suffered bruises throughout her body but survived.
Families Search for Missing Relatives
Many families are still searching for deportees who have not been located.
Liliana Rojas told Telemundo she has been unable to find her 33-year-old partner after learning he had been deported from an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas.
She said officials confirmed only that he had been removed from the United States.
“No one is giving an answer about anything,” Rojas said.
Another survivor, Jenny Rodriguez, 24, also told Telemundo that she became trapped beneath the collapsed hotel before another deportee helped pull her from the rubble.
“I was trapped under the rubble,” she said, explaining that she managed to free one hand and grab the man’s trousers as he passed nearby. “Thanks to God—and to him—I was able to get out of there.”
Earthquake Adds to Deportees’ Ordeal
Portillo said she had entered the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border in November 2021 and had a pending asylum claim before being deported under the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement efforts.
Unable to remember her children’s phone numbers after the earthquake, she called her husband, who remained in the United States.
“I said to him, ‘Cesar, I’m alive. Help me,'” Portillo recalled.
Her husband contacted their children, who reunited with her the following evening after she returned to Maracaibo.
“I was born that day; on the 24th, I was born again,” Portillo said after surviving both deportation and the deadly earthquake.
Questions Remain About Missing Deportees
The Venezuelan government has reported that more than 1,700 people were killed in the earthquakes, although search operations remain ongoing.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for information regarding the deportees who had been staying at the collapsed hotel.
Authorities have not released an official accounting of how many deportees remain missing, leaving families in both Venezuela and the United States awaiting further information as rescue teams continue searching through the rubble.
Tags: Venezuela, U.S. Deportations, Immigration, ICE, Miami, Earthquake, La Guaira, Human Rights First, Trump Administration, Missing Persons, Disaster Response, Asylum
