Families of Venezuelans deported from the US and lost in hotel collapse search for loved ones, and for answers

By Deisy Buitrago and Julia Symmes Cobb

CARACAS, June 29 (Reuters) – Construction worker Anderson Daniel Salcedo spent three months in U.S. immigration detention before boarding a repatriation flight last Wednesday, arriving back in Venezuela just hours before twin earthquakes devastated his homeland.

A big soccer fan, the 22-year-old had lived in the U.S. for more than three years, sending money home so his mother could build a house.

After landing at Maiquetia airport near the capital Caracas, Salcedo and more than 140 other returning migrants including seven children were sent to the nearby government-run Hotel Santuario La Llanada, on a hilltop overlooking the blue Caribbean, to await processing.

But soon after, Venezuela’s strongest quakes in more than a century ripped through coastal La Guaira state, toppling the hotel and likely killing most of the deportees there, according to relatives.

Salcedo survived with life-changing injuries, but his family and relatives of other migrants lost in the hotel collapse have questioned why deportees were taken there and why their phones and documents were withheld, complicating efforts to find and identify them.

The government’s Return to the Homeland Grand Mission, which receives returning migrants, did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters.

“We express our deepest sorrow and solidarity over the tragic loss of life caused by the recent earthquakes,” the Grand Mission posted on its X account on Saturday, three days after the quakes, alongside phone numbers it said families should contact.

“Today we embrace each other in grief, but tomorrow we will rise stronger. We are a people of light, resilience, and hope; together, step by step, we will overcome this trial and find our way home again. You are not alone,” it said.  

The government says at least 1,750 people were killed in the quakes, which flattened or damaged more than 850 buildings, injuring thousands and leaving some 16,000 homeless. A website promoted by the country’s political opposition lists about 45,000 people as still missing.

NO INFORMATION

Satellite images from Vantor show a large section of the hotel reduced to a pile of concrete and rebar, with terracotta roof tiles scattered around the ruins. Another part of the building remained standing.

Two families of some of those on the deportation flight, who have used social media to find one another and share missing posters, told Reuters 12 people escaped the rubble on their own. One had been shown a list from the Grand Mission of 32 survivors from the flight. 

Salcedo was rescued 40 hours after the quakes, his grandmother Marlene Lozano said by phone from her home in Nueva Bolivia in Merida, some 700 km (430 miles) from La Guaira.

He appears in a video sent around among the families who were looking for people at the hotel. Lozano does not know who filmed it, but it shows her grandson being pulled out of a hole in the rubble by several men. His face grimaces in pain as one of the men says “we’ll pull him right now.”

Salcedo’s family said SEBIN, the domestic intelligence service, had earlier taken his phone and identity card. The Communications Ministry, which handles requests for comment, did not immediately respond to an email. 

“He spent 40 hours in that hole, he didn’t have an ID, they couldn’t account for him because he had no documents,” Lozano said. “We had no way to communicate with him and didn’t know anything.”

A relative later found Salcedo at Caracas’ University Hospital and called his aunt. His mother traveled by motorcycle to reach the city with her husband.

“She went straight to the hospital, and that’s where she found him — but they had already amputated his legs. Because he had a lot, a lot of debris on top of his legs,” said Lozano.

Her grandson is now intubated. A doctor at the hospital told the family that damage to his legs was made worse by the way he was pulled from the rubble.

“Here we are praying, asking God to give him strength and courage,” Lozano said. “We are trusting in God, that God will keep him alive as he is. We know he won’t be the same anymore — he’s missing his legs — but we love him, just the way he is.”

Lozano said the family has received no official information and when she visited the SEBIN office in her town, she was told they had nothing to share.

A CALL, THEN NOTHING

Oswadeliz Nunez, an industrial engineer and lawyer, has had similar problems getting official information about her son Daniel Nunez, 28, who arrived on the same flight. Nunez’s son borrowed a phone when he landed and told her he was being taken to a hotel and would be released home the following day.

“Thank God my son called me, because otherwise I would never have spoken to him again,” said Nunez.

On Thursday, Nunez rushed to La Guaira from El Tigre, in Anzoategui state, about 470 km (290 miles) southeast of Caracas, and was told by one SEBIN official that her son was taken away in an ambulance.

She was unable to find him at any clinic or hospital, and was later shown an official list where he appears as missing. Nunez said SEBIN officials have been digging through the rubble with their bare hands, and only on Monday did heavy machinery arrive at the site.

“We are earnestly asking the international community to help us recover the bodies, because if it was God’s will that my son was there, I want my son’s body. I can’t wait one or two months until the government decides to remove the bodies,” she said.

If her son had been allowed to head home immediately, he would be alive, she added.

“They did not commit any crime. They were already in their country, they had already been deported.”

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas and Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)