While celebrating Maduro’s capture, Venezuelan immigrants worry about deportation
WASHINGTON- After President Trump ordered strikes that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, celebrations erupted in Venezuelan communities across the United States.
But for many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants facing deportation, their relief and joy have been cut short by fear of what happens next from an administration that has singled out Venezuelans as a target.
“A lot of us wondered, ‘What’s going to happen to us now?'” said AG, a 39-year-old woman from Tennessee who asked to be identified by her initials because she lacks legal status. Despite this, Maduro’s ouster gave him much hope for his motherland.
Venezuelans began fleeing en masse in 2014, as economic collapse led to widespread shortages of food and medicine, as well as political repression. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans now live outside the country, including 1.2 million in the United States.
Venezuelan migrants walk towards Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 2019.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
AG and her now 18-year-old son arrived at the southern border in 2019. Since then, she says, they have built a good life: They own a transportation company with delivery trucks, pay taxes and follow the law.
Maduro’s fall left him with mixed feelings.
“He’s obviously a dictator, a lot of people died because of him and he refused to give up power, but the reason they entered Venezuela, to me what President Trump did was illegal,” she said. “Innocent people died because of the bombs. I ask God that it was all for a good reason.”
Dozens of Venezuelans and others were killed in the U.S. invasion — more than 100, a government official said — including civilians.
The Trump administration presents its operation in Venezuela as an opportunity for Venezuelans as AG. “Now they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future,” said Matthew Tragesser, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Katie Blankenship, a Miami-based attorney with Sanctuary of the South who has represented many Venezuelans facing deportation, sees a less promising future.
“We will see increasing targeting of Venezuelans to force them to leave the United States in a political and socio-economic environment that will likely only be more destabilized and subject to more abuses,” she said.
The Venezuelan community in the United States has grown, in part, because the Biden administration has expanded routes into the country.
A volunteer helps a Venezuelan immigrant in the storage units of a volunteer-run program that distributes donations to recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants in need, in Miami, Florida, 2023.
(Eva Marie Uzcategui / Los Angeles Times)
One such program allowed more than 117,000 Venezuelans to purchase flights directly to the United States and stay there for two years if they had a U.S.-based financial sponsor and passed a background check. Other Venezuelans entered legally at land ports of entry after scheduling interviews with border agents.
By the end of the Biden administration, more than 600,000 Venezuelans had protection from deportation through Temporary Protected Status, a program used by both Republican and Democratic administrations for immigrants who cannot return home due to armed conflict, natural disaster, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly called Venezuelan immigrants criminals, singling them out more than any other nationality — in 64 percent of his speeches, according to an Axios analysis. He has repeatedly said, without any evidence, that Venezuela emptied its prisons and psychiatric facilities to flood the United States with immigrants.
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to designate the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization. In two months, he invoked an 18th-century war law, the Foreign Enemies Act, to deport 252 Venezuelan men accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned and tortured despite many of them having no criminal history in the United States or Latin America.
The Trump administration later removed protections afforded to Venezuelans through financial sponsors and TPS, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling the latter “contrary to the national interest.”
In a September Federal Register notice, Noem said TPS for Venezuelans ran counter to the administration’s foreign policy goals because one result of allowing Venezuelans into the United States was to “relieve pressure on the Maduro regime to enact domestic reforms and facilitate safe conditions of return.” In other words, if Venezuelans returned home, it would put pressure on the government to enact reforms.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, accompanied by the U.S. Attorney. Gen. Pam Bondi, left, and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, right, participate in a news conference near Camp 57 at Angola Prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and America’s largest maximum-security prison farm, to announce the opening of a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility that will house immigrants convicted of crimes in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, September 3 2025.
(Matthieu Hilton / AFP via Getty Images)
The administration has offered contrasting assessments of the situation in Venezuela. Noem wrote that while some unfavorable conditions persist, “there are notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health and crime.”
However, throughout the year, the State Department continued to reissue an “extreme danger” travel advisory for Venezuela, urging Americans to leave the country immediately.
The situation for Venezuelans in the United States became more complicated after a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November; in response, the administration froze the immigration records of people from 39 countries, including Venezuela, which it considers “high risk.” This means that anyone who has applied for asylum, a visa, a green card, or any other benefit remains in limbo indefinitely.
After a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in September, the Justice Department appealed. In a supporting brief filed in December, the Justice Department cited escalating tensions with Venezuela.
David Smilde, a sociologist at Tulane University and an expert on Venezuelan politics, said invading Venezuela could justify renewed use of the Foreign Enemies Act.
The law states that the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act not only in cases of “declared war” but also when a foreign government threatens or carries out an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the United States.
“Now it will be difficult, I think, for the court to say, ‘No, you can’t use that,'” Smilde said.
As U.S. officials promise better conditions in Venezuela and encourage citizens to return, Smilde said, they could invoke the Alien Enemy Act to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who don’t leave voluntarily.
“There are several layers to this,” he said, “and none of them look very good for Venezuelan immigrants. »
This couple from Venezuela shared why they left their three children in their home country and spoke about the experiences of their trip to the United States at Parkside Community Church in Sacramento on June 16, 2023.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For the Times)
Jose, a 28-year-old Venezuelan living east of Los Angeles, fled Venezuela in 2015 after being imprisoned and beaten for criticizing the government. He lived in Colombia and Peru before illegally crossing the US border in 2022, and now has a pending asylum application. José asked to be identified by his middle name for fear of reprisals from the U.S. government.
The news this week that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minnesota increased her anxiety.
“You come here because this is supposed to be a country where there is freedom of expression and there is more security, but with this government you are now afraid of getting killed,” he said. “And he was an American citizen. Imagine what they could do to me?”
People visit a memorial for Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Jose qualifies for a work permit based on his pending asylum, but his application is frozen due to the executive order following the National Guard shooting.
The news of Maduro’s arrest was bittersweet, José said, because his mother and grandmother did not live to witness that day. He said his mother died last year of kidney failure due to lack of medical care, leaving him as the main breadwinner for his two younger sisters who remain in Venezuela with their disabled father.
He nevertheless said he was satisfied with what Trump did in Venezuela.
“People say it’s stealing our oil,” he said, “but for 25 years Cuba, China and Iran have been stealing the oil and it hasn’t improved our lives.”
Many Venezuelans were encouraged by the announcement that Venezuela would release a “significant number” of political prisoners as a gesture of peace.
For José, this is not enough. The Venezuelan government ordered police to search for anyone involved in promoting or supporting the attack by US forces, leading to the arrest of journalists and civilians.
“Venezuela remains the same,” he said. “Same shame, same poverty and same government repression. »
AG said she was heartened to hear Noem say on Fox News on Sunday that every Venezuelan with TPS “has the opportunity to apply for refugee status and the assessment will continue.” But the administration quickly reversed course and said that was not the case.
Instead, Noem and other administration officials have doubled down on the idea that Venezuelans without permanent legal status should leave. Noem told Fox News there are no plans to suspend deportation flights despite the political uncertainty in Venezuela.
Tragesser, the spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency’s position has not changed.
“USCIS encourages all Venezuelans in the United States illegally to use the CBP Home app to help them return to their country safely and in an orderly manner,” he said.
