American Dream Shattered: Deportees Face Tragedy on First Day Back in Venezuela

About 100 Venezuelans who were deported from the United States in pursuit of the "American Dream" have gone missing after their temporary lodging collapsed during a powerful earthquake on their first day back in their home country.

According to the Associated Press on June 29 (local time), a deportation flight from Miami, Florida, arrived in Venezuela just hours before a series of earthquakes—measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5—struck the country on June 24.

The "ICE Flight Monitor," a deportation flight tracking project by the human rights organization Human Rights First, reported that there were 146 Venezuelans on board the flight.

Among them were 19 adult women and 7 children.

Immediately after their arrival, they were taken to the Hotel Santuario La Yanada in La Guaira, near the capital city of Caracas. The hotel collapsed when the earthquake struck early that evening.

La Guaira was one of the areas most severely affected by the earthquake.

Lisbeth Portillo, 58, a deportee who escaped after the building collapsed, described the situation in a phone interview with the AP.

She had entered the U.S. by crossing the Mexican border in November 2021 and had lived in southern Florida for over four years before being deported.

According to Portillo, after arriving at the hotel on June 24, the deportees underwent health screenings, received identification documents, and were told they could return to their hometowns the following day.

Assigned to a second-floor room with 16 other women, she said she had stepped out onto the balcony to look at the sea. As soon as she returned to the room and lay down on her bed, the ground began to shake.

"I heard a sound like 'papa, papa, papapa,' and I saw the women next to me falling," Portillo said. "Everyone was screaming for help."

A second earthquake struck almost immediately afterward.

"I fell and was buried under a beam, but because of the shaking, everything where I was buried moved, and I was able to get out," she said.

Her body was covered in bruises.

She recounted wandering the streets in search of help with about 20 other survivors, noting that some people who escaped the collapsed building were running around naked or barefoot.

"We walked about 5 kilometers, and I cried and cried... there was no communication," Portillo said, explaining that she eventually reached a National Guard building where she was able to contact her family.

Unable to remember the phone numbers of her children in Venezuela, she called her husband in the United States.

"I said, 'Cesar, I am alive. Help me,' and my husband kept saying, 'I can't believe it,'" she recalled. "I told him, 'I am alive, I got out of the rubble, I am alive.'"

Her husband contacted their children, who came to pick up Portillo the following night.

Speaking in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Portillo said, "I was reborn. God gave me a second chance."

After a brief pause, she added with a choked voice, "I am traumatized."

"I was born that day. On the 24th, I was born again," Portillo said.

Telemundo broadcasted the testimony of Jenny Rodriguez, 24, who was also deported on the same flight and taken to the hotel.

"I was trapped under the rubble. I saw a companion who was on the same flight passing by, so I reached my hand out of the debris, grabbed his pants, and begged for help," she said. "Thanks to God and that person, I was able to get out."

According to government figures released by Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez on June 28, the death toll from the earthquake stands at 1,719, with 5,034 people injured.

Reuters reported that the United Nations estimates that 6.8 million of Venezuela's 30 million people could be left homeless or without electricity and water due to the earthquake.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.