More than 100 Venezuelans who were deported from the US hours before the earthquakes are missing

Miami — More than 100 people who had just been deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, sparking a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried under rubble, according to survivors.

A repatriation flight from Miami arrived in Caracas hours before Wednesday’s earthquakes. There were 146 Venezuelans on board, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights.

Lizbeth Portillo, 58, said she escaped from the rubble of the hotel with about 20 other deportees who walked the streets in search of help. They saw people running, some naked and others barefoot, as they emerged from under the rubble of the building in La Guaira, one of the areas most affected by last Wednesday’s earthquakes of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude.

“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried…there was no contact,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

They arrived at the National Guard building, where they had the opportunity to contact their relatives.

“I was born again, and God gave me a second chance,” Portillo said. After a period of silence, she said while crying: “I am shocked.”

The Venezuelan government says more than 1,700 people have been killed.

They survived the earthquake on the same day they were deported from the United States

Portillo was arrested in the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations. In May, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile and Ivory Coast.

The United States organized 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, three days a week, according to ICE Flight Monitor. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month hiatus.

The government transferred them to the Santuario La Yanada Hotel, where they underwent medical examinations and obtained identification documents, Portillo said. They were told that they would go home the next day.

Portillo was staying in a room on the second floor with 16 other women. She went up to the balcony to look at the sea and saw the sky was black; It was very hot. She returned to the room, lay down on the bed, and began to feel herself shaking.

“I started hearing baba, baba baba, and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” she said, describing the sounds of the earthquake. “They were all screaming for help.”

Almost immediately the second earthquake occurred.

Portillo, who suffers from bruises all over her body, said: “I fell and ended up buried and covered by a beam, but the tremors changed everything as I was buried and I was able to get out.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for information from the AP.

A video clip published by the Venezuelan government on social media showed pictures of the deportees who were received by the Venezuelan authorities upon their arrival at Caracas airport on Wednesday.

Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told Telemundo that she was on the plane and was taken to the hotel.

She said: “I was trapped under the rubble. A colleague of mine who was on the same flight passed by, and I was able to free my hand from under the rubble, grabbed him by his pants, and asked for help.” “And thanks to God – and him – I was able to get out of there.”

Liliana Rojas told Telemundo she was trying to locate her 33-year-old partner. The detention center where he was held in El Paso, Texas, says he was only informed of his deportation.

“Nobody gives an answer for anything,” Rojas said.

The woman says she feels “reborn” after being saved

Portillo, who crossed the US border with Mexico in November 2021 and said she had a pending asylum application, could not remember her children’s phone number. She called her husband in the United States.

I said to him: Cesar, I am alive, help me. “My husband kept saying, ‘It can’t be like this,'” she said. I told him: “I’m alive. I came out from under the rubble. I’m alive.”

Her husband called their children, who picked her up and were able to reunite them with their mother the next night.

“I was born that day, and on the 24th, I was born again,” said Portillo, who has lived in South Florida for more than four years.