Venezuelans deported from U.S. hours before earthquakes hit are missing, some confirmed dead, families say

Some families in Venezuela are mourning and others are desperately trying to find loved ones who had been deported from the U.S. and arrived hours before the earthquakes struck last week.

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The deportees were being processed at the Hotel Santuario La Llanada in the coastal state of La Guaira, one of the hardest-hit areas. Families have confirmed some deportees have died while others are unaccounted for.

Enit Hernández told NBC News her husband, José Rafael Rossi Ydrogo, is one of the missing deportees.

“On Tuesday he called me and said they told him to gather his belongings because he was leaving the next day. That was the last time I ever heard from him,” Hernández said from Texas, where the couple lived.

Hernández said that her husband was detained during an ICE check-in and that even though he was told a judge would review his case, he was deported Wednesday. In Fort Worth, Rossi Ydrogo owned a construction business and remodeled homes.

The couple came to the U.S. in 2021 and lived in New Jersey with their daughter before they moved to Texas.

“My entire life changed in just one day. There was no need for him to go through all of this. I’m here alone with my daughter now. It’s not easy,” she said.

Hernández said Rossi Ydrogo had just called his brother in Caracas 20 minutes before the earth started to shake.

Asked for information about the flight, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that it “safely reached Venezuela” and that all the people on board had been returned home.

“When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them,” the spokesperson said.

On board the deportation flight were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights, The Associated Press reported. The country’s main airport, Simón Bolivar International Airport, is in La Guaira, where the Hotel Santuario La Llanada collapsed. Other deportees have been processed there in the past.

Multiple relatives and friends have said authorities aren’t allowing them or rescue workers near the collapsed building, making attempts to obtain information nearly impossible.

From Chile, a cousin of Daniel Alejandro Núñez Ramírez, 28, who’s also missing, said that his mother was told he had been found alive in the rubble and had been taken out but that so far the family hasn’t found him in any of the hospitals.

“We feel destroyed, because it really hurts us,” said the cousin, Yaneth Gabriela Mejías Ramírez. “At the same time, we have faith we will find him. But even if he passed away, we want to find him.”

Mejías Ramírez said that in the U.S., her cousin had been working in construction when police stopped him two months ago for a minor traffic violation and that he agreed to be deported to Venezuela following his detention.

Angelo Mejía Meléndez, 27, was also deported on the “infamous” flight, as some relatives refer to it. His mother, Luz Marina Meléndez, told Noticias Telemundo that she found out he was killed in the earthquakes when a survivor told her he saw her son perish next to him.

“I’m sad and I’m enraged,” Meléndez said, adding that the family was to have had a reunion that very weekend.

Katherine Arana, a Venezuelan American from Greenville, South Carolina, who is a friend of missing deportee Núñez Ramírez, said that amid the lack of information and the ensuing chaos, she created a spreadsheet to keep track of the deportees on the flight.

She has heard from relatives that at least 25 deportees were killed, 21 were still missing Monday and nine had survived. She also said some bodies recovered from the rubble hadn’t been identified.

In Venezuela, the number of dead and injured has been rising since the magnitude-7.2 and -7.5 quakes struck Wednesday. The Venezuelan government raised the toll Monday to 1,719 dead and 5,034 injured. The United Nations estimates 50,000 people are missing.

Rescue teams from around the world, including the U.S., have been searching frantically for days.