More than 100 Venezuelans deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela, trapping survivors and killing more than 1,700 people, according to survivors and the Venezuelan government.
Deportation flight arrived hours before quakes
A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Venezuela on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, hours before the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes. On board were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First that tracks deportation flights. The deportees were transported to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, one of the hardest-hit areas.
Lisbeth Portillo, 58, said she escaped the rubble with about 20 other deportees and walked the streets looking for help. “We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela. They reached a National Guard building, where they were able to call relatives. “I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” she said, weeping. “I am traumatized.”
Survivor describes being buried by a beam
Portillo said the government took them to the hotel for medical exams and identification documents, and they were told they would go home the next day. She was staying on the second floor with 16 other women. She stepped onto a balcony and saw the sky was black and it was very hot. She returned to the room and felt herself being shaken. “I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’ 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 struck. “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,” said Portillo, who has bruises all over her body.
Portillo crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in November 2021 and had a pending asylum claim. She could not remember her children’s phone numbers after the disaster. She called her husband in the United States: “I said to him, ‘Cesar, I’m alive. Help me.’ And my husband kept saying, ‘It can’t be.’ ‘I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive,’ I told him.” Her husband called their children, who reunited with her the following night.
Other survivors and missing persons
Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told the Telemundo network that she was on the flight and taken to the hotel. “I was trapped under the rubble. A colleague who had been on the same flight came by; I managed to free my hand from the debris, grabbed him by the trousers, and begged for help. Thanks to God — and to him — I was able to get out of there.”
Liliana Rojas told Telemundo she has been trying to locate her 33-year-old partner, who was deported from El Paso, Texas. The detention center only told her he was deported. “No one is giving an answer about anything,” Rojas said.
Deportations under Trump administration
Portillo was caught up in the Trump administration’s drive for mass deportations. In May 2026, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, and the Ivory Coast. The U.S. ran 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, operating three days a week, according to ICE Flight Monitor. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month pause.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for information from the AP. A video from the Venezuelan government posted on social media showed images of the deportees being received by authorities upon arrival at the Caracas airport on Wednesday.
