MARACAIBO: The hands of Yosbelin Pérez have made tens of thousands of the aluminum round gridles that Venezuelan families heat every day to cook arepas. She takes deep pride in making the revered “budare,” the common denominator among rural tin-roofed homes and city apartments, but she owns nothing to her name despite the years selling cookware.
Pérez, in fact, owes about $5,000 because she and her family never made it to the United States, where they had hoped to escape Venezuela’s entrenched political, social and economic crisis. Now, like thousands of Venezuelans who have voluntarily or otherwise returned to their country this year, they are starting over as the crisis worsens.
“When I decided to leave in August, I sold everything: house, belongings, car, everything from my factory — molds, sand. I was left with nothing,” Pérez, 30, said at her in-laws’ home in western Venezuela. “We arrived in Mexico, stayed there for seven months, and when President (Donald Trump) came to power in January, I said, ‘Let’s go!’”
She, her husband and five children returned to their South American country in March.
COVID-19 pandemic pushed migrants to the US
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have migrated since 2013, when their country’s oil-dependent economy unraveled. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants saw the US as their best chance to improve their living conditions.
Many Venezuelans entered the US under programs that allowed them to obtain work permits and shielded them from deportation. But since January, the White House has ended immigrants’ protections and aggressively sought their deportations as US President Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promise to limit immigration to the US
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had long refused to take back deported Venezuelans but changed course earlier this year under pressure from the White House. Immigrants now arrive regularly at the airport outside the capital, Caracas, on flights operated by either a US government contractor or Venezuela’s state-owned airline.
The US government has defended its bold moves, including sending more than 200 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador for four months, arguing that many of the immigrants belonged to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang. The administration did not provide evidence to back up the blanket accusation. However, several recently deported immigrants have said US authorities wrongly judged their tattoos and used them as an excuse to deport them.
Maduro declared ‘economic emergency’
Many of those returning home, like Pérez and her family, are finding harsher living conditions than when they left as a currency crisis, triple-digit inflation and meager wages have made food and other necessities unaffordable, let alone the vehicle, home and electronics they sold before migrating. The monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or $1.02 as of Monday, has not increased in Venezuela since 2022. People typically have two, three or more jobs to cobble together money.
This latest chapter in the 12-year crisis even prompted Maduro to declare an “economic emergency” in April.
David Rodriguez migrated twice each to Colombia and Peru before he decided to try to get to the US He left Venezuela last year, crossed the treacherous Darien Gap on foot, made it across Central America and walked, hopped on a train and took buses all over Mexico. He then turned himself in to US immigration authorities in December, but he was detained for 15 days and deported to Mexico.
Broke, the 33-year-old Rodriguez worked as a mototaxi driver in Mexico City until he saved enough money to buy his airplane ticket back to Venezuela in March.
“Going to the United States ... was a total setback,” he said while sitting at a relative’s home in Caracas. “Right now, I don’t know what to do except get out of debt first.”
He must pay $50 a week for a motorcycle he bought to work as a mototaxi driver. In a good week, he said, he can earn $150, but there are others when he only makes enough to meet the $50 payment.
Migrants seek loan sharks
Some migrants enrolled in beauty and pastry schools or became food delivery drivers after being deported. Others already immigrated to Spain. Many sought loan sharks.
Pérez’s brother-in-law, who also made aluminum cookware before migrating last year, is allowing her to use the oven and other equipment he left at his home in Maracaibo so that the family can make a living. But most of her earnings go to cover the 40 percent monthly interest fee of a $1,000 loan.
If the debt was not enough of a concern, Pérez is also having to worry about the exact reason that drove her away: extortion.
Pérez said she and her family fled Maracaibo after she spent several hours in police custody in June 2024 for refusing to pay an officer $1,000. The officer, Pérez said, knocked on her door and demanded the money in exchange for letting her keep operating her unpermitted cookware business in her backyard.
She said officers tracked her down upon her return and already demanded money.
“I work to make a living from one day to the next ... Last week, some guardsmen came. ‘Look, you must support me,’” Pérez said she was told in early July.
“So, if I don’t give them any (money), others show up, too. I transferred him $5. It has to be more than $5 because otherwise, they’ll fight you.”
Migrants returning to Venezuela face debt and harsh living conditions
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Migrants returning to Venezuela face debt and harsh living conditions
- Since January the White House has ended immigrants’ protections and aggressively sought their deportations as US President Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promise to limit immigration to the US
Federal agents must limit tear gas for now at protests outside Portland ICE building, judge says
- The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists covering demonstrations at the flashpoint US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building
PORTLAND, Oregon: A judge in Oregon on Tuesday temporarily restricted federal officers from using tear gas at protests at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, just days after agents launched gas at a crowd of demonstrators including young children that local officials described as peaceful.
US District Judge Michael Simon ordered federal officers not to use chemical or projectile munitions on people who pose no imminent threat of physical harm, or who are merely trespassing or refusing to disperse. Simon also limited federal officers from firing munitions at the head, neck or torso “unless the officer is legally justified in using deadly force against that person.”
Simon, whose temporary restraining order is in effect for 14 days, wrote that the nation “is now at a crossroads.”
“In a well-functioning constitutional democratic republic, free speech, courageous newsgathering, and nonviolent protest are all permitted, respected, and even celebrated,” he wrote. “In helping our nation find its constitutional compass, an impartial and independent judiciary operating under the rule of law has a responsibility that it may not shirk.”
Ruling follows a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Oregon on behalf of protesters and freelance journalists covering demonstrations at the flashpoint US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.
The suit names as defendants the Department of Homeland Security and its head Kristi Noem, as well as President Donald Trump. It argues that federal officers’ use of chemical munitions and excessive force is a retaliation against protesters that chills their First Amendment rights.
The Department of Homeland Security said federal officers have “followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property.”
“DHS is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
Courts consider question of tear gas use
Cities across the country have seen demonstrations against the administration’s immigration enforcement surge.
Last month, a federal appeals court suspended a decision that prohibited federal officers from using tear gas or pepper spray against peaceful protesters in Minnesota who aren’t obstructing law enforcement. An appeals court also halted a ruling from a federal judge in Chicago that restricted federal agents from using certain riot control weapons, such as tear gas and pepper balls, unless necessary to prevent an immediate threat. A similar lawsuit brought by the state is now before the same judge.
The Oregon complaint describes instances in which the plaintiffs — including a protester known for wearing a chicken costume, a married couple in their 80s and two freelance journalists — had chemical or “less-lethal” munitions used against them.
In October, 83-year-old Vietnam War veteran Richard Eckman and his 84-year-old wife Laurie Eckman joined a peaceful march to the ICE building. Federal officers then launched chemical munitions at the crowd, hitting Laurie Eckman in the head with a pepper ball and causing her to bleed, according to the complaint. With bloody clothes and hair, she sought treatment at a hospital, which gave her instructions for caring for a concussion. A munition also hit her husband’s walker, the complaint says.
Jack Dickinson, who frequently attends protests at the ICE building in a chicken suit, has had munitions aimed at him while posing no threat, according to the complaint. Federal officers have shot munitions at his face respirator and at his back, and launched a tear-gas canister that sparked next to his leg and burned a hole in his costume, the complaint says.
Freelance journalists Hugo Rios and Mason Lake have similarly been hit with pepper balls and tear gassed while marked as press, the complaint says.
“Defendants must be enjoined from gassing, shooting, hitting and arresting peaceful Portlanders and journalists willing to document federal abuses as if they are enemy combatants,” the complaint states.
The owner and residents of the affordable housing complex across the street from the ICE building has filed a separate lawsuit, similarly seeking to restrict federal officers’ use of tear gas because its residents have been repeatedly exposed over the past year.
Local officials have also spoken out against use of chemical munitions. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson demanded ICE leave the city after federal officers used such munitions Saturday at what he described as a “peaceful daytime protest where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces.”
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson wrote in a statement Saturday night.
The protest was one of many similar demonstrations nationwide against the immigration crackdown in cities like Minneapolis, where in recent weeks federal agents killed two people, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
