US deportees survive deadly Venezuela quakes after hotel collapse

Miami,UPDATED: Jun 30, 2026 02:52 IST

More than 100 people who had just been deported from the United States were being housed in a hotel in Venezuela when two earthquakes struck on Wednesday, according to survivors. A flight from Miami had landed in Caracas hours earlier carrying 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First that tracks deportation flights.

Survivors said the quakes set off panic and a desperate search for people trapped in the rubble. The Venezuelan government has said more than 1,700 people were killed. Lisbeth Portillo, 58, said she got out from the wreckage with about 20 other deportees and walked through the streets to find help after the hotel in La Guaira, one of the worst-hit areas, was hit by the 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes.

Portillo said the deportees had been taken to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada after arriving in Venezuela, where they underwent medical checks and were given identification documents. They were told they would go home the next day. She said she was in a second-floor room with 16 other women. After stepping out on to a balcony to look at the sea, she returned to the room and lay down, when the shaking began. “I started hearing papa, papa papapa, and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” she said. “They were all screaming for help.” She said a second earthquake followed almost at once. “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,” said Portillo, who said she has bruises all over her body.

She said she and the others then walked about five kilometres until they reached a Guard building, where they were able to call relatives. “We walked about five kilometres, and I cried and cried ... there was no communication,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo. “I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” she said. “I am traumatised.” Portillo said she had crossed the US border with Mexico in November 2021 and had a pending asylum claim. She said she could not remember her children’s phone number, so she called 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 said. “I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive,’ I told him.” Her husband contacted their children, who picked her up and reunited with her the following night.

Portillo was among those caught up in the Trump administration’s drive for mass deportations. In May, ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile and Ivory Coast. It said the US operated 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, running three days a week. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month pause. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for information from AP. A video posted on social media by the Venezuelan government showed the deportees being received by Venezuelan authorities at Caracas airport on Wednesday.

Other deportees also described being trapped. Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told Telemundo that she was on the flight and was 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 she has been trying to locate her 33-year-old partner after the detention centre in El Paso, Texas, told her only that he had been deported. “No one is giving an answer about anything,” Rojas said. Summing up her own survival, Portillo said: “I was born that day; on the 24th, I was born again.”

With PTI Inputs

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