La Guaira, Venezuela
Relatives are desperately searching for their loved ones after a hotel holding more than 100 Venezuelans who were deported by the US on Wednesday collapsed during deadly earthquakes that same evening.
A deportation flight from Miami to Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar International Airport carrying 146 people, including 19 women and 7 children, landed at 10:22 a.m. local time Wednesday, according to Venezuelan authorities and ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative by Human Rights First which tracks deportation flights.
The deportees were taken to Hotel Santuario in La Guaira, a coastal city north of the capital, Caracas. Hours later, two once-in-a-century earthquakes struck Venezuela within seconds of each other, causing widespread damage across La Guaira, killing at least 1,700 people, with many more still missing.
Some of the deportees survived the hotel’s collapse, but many remain trapped in the rubble.
Luis Armando Dasilva said he and his family have been anxiously waiting for five days for news about his sister, Amanda Donizete, who was deported Wednesday and has not been heard from since.
“They are not giving us answers about where she is. If she is there at a hospital or at the morgue. We have already checked all of that and we haven’t found her,” he told CNN, referring to local officials.
Dasilva said Donizete had been working in the US state of Georgia after fleeing Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis. But when she found out she was being sent home to her country, “she was very happy and wanted to see her family.”
Rescuers have been combing through the rubble of the hotel in a desperate attempt to save any survivors. But days after the initial disaster, hope is dwindling.
Some relatives of those missing told CNN they just want to be able to properly bury their loved ones.
“Please, those of you who are here, help us, help us,” pleaded José Gregorio Rincón Ávila, grandfather of a deportee.
“We have been waiting many days. We already know those bodies have been there for several days since Wednesday, but at least let us take our loved ones home,” he told CNN.
“We want our family members — whatever condition they are in — we just want to be able to bury them,” Dasilva pleaded.
CNN has reached out to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department for comment on the fate of Wednesday’s deportees.
The US has sent search and rescue teams to Venezuela and committed more than $300 million to relief efforts so far.
In October, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 300,000 Venezuelan migrants, who were permitted entry under a humanitarian relief program.
Since then, the US has been deporting hundreds of people per week to Venezuela. In the month of May, the US deported 1,746 Venezuelans according to ICE Flight Monitor.
A video posted by a Venezuelan government official showed deportees arriving at Simon Bolivar airport Wednesday.
The wife of one of the deportees told CNN her husband had been in the US for three years, building a better life for their family.
Her husband was detained by ICE for 15 days before he was returned to Venezuela, she told CNN.
“That’s when the tragedy happened,” said the woman, who did not give her name. She said she’s lost hope of ever seeing her husband alive again.
“Since Friday we have been waiting for an answer to see if (the local authorities) will hand over the bodies to us. Because they say there is no life,” she told CNN.
Yulis Salcedo said she had decorated her home with blue, yellow and red balloons in the color of Venezuela’s flag to welcome home her 21-year-old son Anderson, who was on the flight from Miami on Wednesday morning.
Anderson had arrived safely and was staying overnight in the La Guaira hotel before returning home, Salcedo said in an interview with Reuters news agency.
“He called me at 5pm and told me ‘I love you so much, Mom. See you tomorrow at home,’” Salcedo said in an interview with Reuters.
Now Anderson is fighting for his life in hospital.
“I want justice because it’s not fair that my son is lying in that bed, with respiratory support, with his legs amputated at the age of 21,” Salcedo said.
