Over 100 Venezuelan immigrants are missing after the hotel they were staying at collapsed in back-to-back earthquakes hours after being deported to their home country from the United States.
A deportation flight flying out of Miami landed in Venezuela on Wednesday, dropping off 146 Venezuelans, according to a deportation flight tracker. They were sent to a hotel in La Guaira to stay temporarily, a hotel among those that bore the brunt of the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that leveled buildings across the country.
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Lisbeth Portillo told the Associated Press that she escaped the collapsed hotel with about 20 other deportees. Most of the others on the flight were trapped beneath the rubble.
“I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” she told the outlet. “I am traumatized.”
Her group fled to a nearby National Guard building, where they were able to contact relatives.
The deportees are among the thousands still missing five days after the devastating earthquakes. Caracas has put the death toll at over 1,700 as of Monday.
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The earthquake hit Venezuela at one of the worst times as it seeks to chart a new course following decades of economic dysfunction and misrule. The country’s neighbors have sent aid and rescue help, including Caracas’s new ally, the U.S.
Venezuela has been a major target of deportation flights, as a high proportion of illegal entries into the U.S. over the past decade have been Venezuelan. The country saw the Western Hemisphere’s largest peacetime refugee crisis beginning in the mid-2010s, as Venezuelans fled economic collapse, rising crime, and the dysfunctional rule of former dictator Nicolas Maduro, who was captured by the U.S. in a January military operation.
