Imagine surviving a grueling journey across borders, spending years trying to build a life in America, and then getting packed onto a deportation flight back to the country you fled. Now imagine landing, being shuttled to a local hotel, and hours later, the entire building collapses on top of you during a massive earthquake.
This nightmare is exactly what just happened to dozens of migrants. A deportation flight from Miami landed in Venezuela on Wednesday, carrying 146 deportees. Hours later, twin 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes ripped through the region. More than 1,700 people are dead across Venezuela, and right now, over 100 of those recently returned migrants are missing under the concrete rubble of their temporary holding facility.
The Hotel Santuario La Llanada Disaster
When the flight touched down, Venezuelan authorities processed the arrivals and moved them to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira. This coastal area took a direct, brutal hit from the earthquakes. The group included 19 women and seven children. They were undergoing medical checks and getting local identification papers, expecting to head to their home provinces the following day. They never got the chance.
Survivors describe a sudden, violent shifting of the earth that brought the hotel down in seconds. Lisbeth Portillo, a 58-year-old grandmother who lived in South Florida for four years before being swept up in mass deportations, was resting in a second-floor room when the shaking started. She was buried under a collapsing structural beam. Miraculously, a secondary tremor shifted the debris, allowing her to scramble out with severe bruising.
Portillo and about 20 other survivors walked five kilometers through ruined streets, watching barefoot and injured neighbors flee the destruction. With local cell towers down, she couldn't call for help until reaching a National Guard station.
Another survivor, 24-year-old Jenny Rodriguez, told reporters she was completely trapped beneath heavy concrete. She managed to free a single hand, grabbing the pant leg of a fellow deportee who was stumbling past the debris. He managed to pull her out alive.
Families Left in the Dark
The hardest part of this unfolding crisis is the absolute lack of information for families left behind in the United States. Because these individuals were under government custody and processing, there are no official public registries of who survived the hotel collapse and who is still trapped.
Liliana Rojas has spent days frantically calling detention centers and federal agencies trying to find her 33-year-old partner. He was deported on that exact flight from an El Paso, Texas facility. The only answer she gets from official channels is confirmation that he was put on the plane. No one can tell her if he is alive, hospitalized, or buried in La Guaira.
Human Rights First, which monitors immigration flights via its ICE Flight Monitor project, confirmed the exact manifest of the flight. However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not provided specific details regarding the status of the individuals they handed over just hours before the disaster.
How to Track Information and Support Victims
If you have a relative who was deported to Venezuela on the June 24 flight, navigating the bureaucratic silence is incredibly difficult. You cannot rely on standard automated hotlines right now.
First, contact the advocacy groups monitoring these specific flights. Organizations like Human Rights First maintain active tracking data and often coordinate with on-the-ground human rights networks in Venezuela to identify survivors.
Second, try contacting regional medical centers in the Vargas state or La Guaira directly if you have contact points on the ground, as many survivors were taken to local emergency hubs rather than official state facilities.
International rescue teams are still actively clearing the rubble at the Hotel Santuario La Llanada site, but local infrastructure is severely fractured. Power lines are down, clean water is scarce, and communication remains spotty at best. The window for finding survivors beneath the collapsed hotel is closing fast, making immediate transparency from both governments vital.
