According to survivors, more than 100 people recently deported from the United States were staying in a hotel when earthquakes hit Venezuela, prompting searches for both survivors and bodies buried under debris.
A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Venezuela hours before Wednesday's earthquakes. ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First that tracks deportation flights, reported that 146 Venezuelans were on board, including 19 women and seven children. They were transported to a hotel in La Guaira.
Lisbeth Portillo, 58, stated she escaped the rubble from the hotel with approximately 20 other deportees who walked through the streets seeking assistance. They observed people running—some naked and others barefoot—as they emerged from the building's rubble in La Guaira, one of the areas most affected by Wednesday’s 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes.
"We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication," Portillo told a phone interviewer from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela. They eventually reached a National Guard building where they could contact relatives.
Portillo commented, “I was born again; God gave me a second chance.” She added after a pause while weeping, "I am traumatized." The Venezuelan government reports that over 1,700 people were killed.
Those who survived the earthquake on the same day they were deported from the U.S. included Portillo. Her experience was part of the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations. In May, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, and the Ivory Coast.
ICE Flight Monitor indicated that the U.S. conducted 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, operating three days a week. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 following a 13-month hiatus.
Portillo recounted that officials took them to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, where they received medical examinations and identification documents. They were informed they would be sent home the next day.
Portillo was occupying a second-floor room with 16 other women. While stepping onto a balcony to view the sea, she noticed the sky was black and it was very hot. Upon returning to her room and lying on a bed, she began feeling herself shake.
Describing the sounds of the earthquake, she said, “I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’ and I saw the women next to me start to fall. They were all screaming for help.” Almost immediately, a second earthquake occurred.
"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 said, noting she has bruises across her body.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to an information request from the AP.
A video released by the Venezuelan government on social media showed images of the deportees being met by Venezuelan authorities upon their arrival at Caracas airport on Wednesday.
Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told Telemundo 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," she said. "Thanks to God — and to him — I was able to get out of there."
Liliana Rojas told Telemundo that she has been trying to locate her 33-year-old partner. The detention center in El Paso, Texas, where he was held, only confirmed his deportation. "No one is giving an answer about anything," Rojas stated.
Portillo, who crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in November 2021 and had a pending asylum claim, could not recall her children’s phone number. She contacted 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,’” she recounted. “‘I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive,’ I told him.”
Her husband contacted their children, who subsequently picked her up and reunited with their mother the following night. "I was born that day; on the 24th, I was born again," said Portillo, who had resided in South Florida for over four years.