More than 100 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. hours before the earthquakes are missing
Article excerpt
A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Caracas hours before Wednesday's earthquakes. On board were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor.
Screenshot via CNN
At least 100 people deported from the U.S. hours before deadly earthquakes struck Venezuela are missing beneath rubble amid the ongoing search for survivors, according to a new report by the Associated Press.
The death toll has surpassed 1,700 after major back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck the country on June 24. Five days later, rescuers are miraculously still pulling survivors out from the rubble, including a 21-year-old man.
One hundred and forty-six Venezuelans, seven children and nineteen women among them, were reportedly on a deportation flight from Miami that landed in Venezuela just hours before the first earthquake. They were taken to Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, which collapsed amid the earthquakes.
More than one hundred of the deportees remain missing.
AP spoke to one survivor, Lisbeth Portillo, who escaped the hotel rubble with approximately 20 others and reported seeing people running naked and barefoot through the streets as they also escaped the rubble.
“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication,” Portillo told AP in a phone interview from Maracaibo, Venezuela, as she added through tears, “I was born again. God gave me a second chance. I am traumatized.”
When the earthquakes struck, Portillo said she was in a second-floor hotel room with sixteen other women.
“I fall and end up buried and covered by a beam, but the shaking shifted everything where I was buried and I was able to get out,” Portillo, who is now covered in bruises, told AP of her experience as the second earthquake hit.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for comment, per AP.
Citing the ICE Flight Monitor, created by the Human Rights Initiative, AP reported there have been 288 deportation flights to 38 countries since May 2026, including 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in the month of May alone. Up until February 2025, there had been a break in deportation flights to Venezuela.
The post At Least 100 Venezuelans Deported by U.S. Are Missing in Earthquake Rubble After Hotel Collapse first appeared on Mediaite.