Tens of thousands of people still haven’t been found after a pair of devastating earthquakes in Venezuela last week—including some Venezuelans who had just been deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push and were being held in a hotel when the temblors hit, The Associated Press revealed Monday.
There were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, on a deportation flight that arrived just hours before the 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes, the AP reported, citing a Human Rights First initiative that has tracked thousands of such flights under Trump. They were brought to Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, which collapsed because of the quakes.
“Lisbeth Portillo, 58, said she escaped the rubble from the hotel with about 20 other deportees who walked the streets looking for help. They saw people running, some naked and others barefoot as they emerged from the rubble of the building,” according to the outlet.
Another deportee who survived, 24-year-old Jenny Rodriguez, told Telemundo: “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.”
Oswadeliz Núñez Ramírez is still “frantically searching for her son,” 28-year-old Daniel Alejandro Núñez Ramírez, who was also on the deportation flight and at the hotel, the Miami Herald reported Monday. A member of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service who called himself “Jonathan” told her that he had pulled her son from the rubble, but, “skeptical of the official account, his mother has searched every hospital, clinic, and sector of La Guaira and Caracas without success.”
While US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to the AP’s request for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, told the Herald: “This flight safely reached Venezuela, and all illegal aliens on board were returned home. When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them.”
Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said Monday that the earthquake has left at least 1,719 dead, 5,034 injured, and 15,866 displaced from their homes.
UN News noted Monday that the ongoing search and rescue effort involves more than 2,000 workers from over two dozen countries, plus over 160 dogs, and Gianluca Rampolla, the United Nations resident coordinator in Venezuela, “reported that the UN and Venezuelan authorities had agreed to procure 10,000 body bags in anticipation of the death toll rising further.”
Rampolla said that “together with the search and rescue operations, we are focusing, together with the government, on providing emergency healthcare, shelter, food assistance, water and sanitation, and logistical support to ensure not only the storage but also the distribution of all the supplies arriving in the country, as well as protection.”
As of Monday evening, more than 44,000 people remained missing, according to a reunion website for families. As NBC News detailed Monday:
Even as the chances of finding survivors diminished with every passing hour, Venezuelans continued using shovels, ropes, and their bare hands as they dug through mountains of collapsed concrete.
They were joined by a growing number of international rescue teams, who pulled multiple survivors from the wreckage, offering desperate families a rare glimmer of hope.
Among the rescues, teams from the United States, France, and Venezuela pulled a man and his son from the ruins Sunday morning after they had spent four days trapped beneath the rubble.
Organizations including US-based peace group CodePink and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, DC-based think tank, have called on the US and allied countries to lift all sanctions against Venezuela in the wake of the earthquakes.
Trump earlier this year directed an illegal invasion of Venezuela, during which US forces killed scores of people and abducted President Nicolás Maduro, then seized control of the South American country’s nationalized oil industry.