Fearing Arrest, Venezuelan Migrant Abandons US Dream
A Venezuelan woman who went through hell to emigrate to America is going back to her troubled homeland, saying that living in fear is no life at all. Deisy -- who declined to give her last name for safety concerns -- will uproot her three children, sever all the links she made in America and brave the economic misery and other turmoil she fled in the first place. That's how terrified she is, every day, all day, of being scooped up in one of the raids the Trump administration is carrying out in its relentless crackdown on people without papers. "What I thought was a dream has turned into a nightmare," said Deisy. "The situation is total chaos. Who wants to be arrested in a country that is not theirs?" Trump was elected last year in large part on his pledge of a historic wave of deportations, and he is delivering. Any day now, transplanted Chicago resident Deisy, 37, and her kids will join the growing number of people deporting themselves to avoid falling into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In recent months ICE agents have stepped up arrests and the targets have included 252 Venezuelans who were sent handcuffed to a notorious prison in El Salvador without court hearings, on allegations they belong to a powerful Latino crime gang called Tren de Aragua.
The detainees, their lawyers and advocacy groups insist the men have no ties to that organization. Deisy arrived in the United States in 2019 after an arduous trip from Panama, where she had emigrated six years earlier to find work. In her hometown of Maracay in the north of Venezuela, she could not make a living so she made the heartbreaking decision to leave her children with her mother and set out in search of a better life for all of them. After crossing the border with Mexico on foot, she turned herself in to the US authorities and was released with the obligation to appear later in immigration court. Her first taste of Chicago was grueling. She had little money, spoke no English and had no papers. But she stuck it out. In order to live and send money back home, she worked in construction -- demolition, to be exact -- and drove an Uber. Life back home seemed like a much worse alternative, as is the case for many migrants in the United States.
The United Nations says nearly eight million people have left Venezuela in the past decade because of an economic meltdown in the once prosperous, oil-rich country, which suffers from acute shortages of food, medicine and other basic needs. And President Nicolas Maduro is accused of acting like a repressive leftist dictator who tolerates no dissent and steals elections. Now, what Deisy fears is not leaving but staying. Not long ago the immigration authorities picked up a work colleague whose status is the same as hers -- living in the US with an asylum request pending. The Trump administration has pledged to revoke a special temporary status that Joe Biden's administration granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans that shielded them from deportation. They include Deisy's children, who joined her in 2022, and her husband, a Venezuelan she met in the United States.
"We live in fear that we will be stopped on the street," Deisy said. "We don't want to be deported to a jail with criminals, where they treat us all as if we were members of Tren de Aragua." Going home is not easy. Besides uprooting the family, Deisy has to pay for the trip and deal with messy paperwork. For instance, many Venezuelans have had their passports seized by US authorities. After considering several options she has decided to fly with a travel agency that specializes in people like her, Venezuelans going home. It is running 60 flights a month -- 70 percent more than before Trump was inaugurated. "Life in Venezuela is rough, but my husband and I do not seek to be rich. And I think I prefer peace and quiet, the stability of being at home," said Deisy. "For us, peace of mind is priceless."
