Amid the escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela that resulted in the capture of strongman Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has been sending Venezuelan immigrants to Mexico since at least December.

The Miami Herald has spoken with Venezuelans immigrants — including a single mother with two young children and a man who had fled government authorities in Venezuela and then a guerilla group in Colombia — and their families.

They say they were held in detention centers in Texas before being handed over to Mexican authorities. The Mexican government later sent them by bus to the southern city of Villahermosa, where violence and organized crime has exploded in recent years, as well as the municipality of Palenque, in the state of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala.

“Once I entered immigration detention, I lost everything,” said Omar Vergara Flores, a 36-year-old man who had just purchased a home in Austin with his wife and was planning to acquire a construction franchise.

A shelter administrator in Villahermosa, the capital city of Tabasco, told the Herald his center has received several Venezuelan men, women, and children deported from the U.S. since Caracas announced on Dec. 12 that the United States had unilaterally suspended deportation flights to Venezuela.

U.S. deportations to Venezuela are heavily influenced by the political relations between the two countries. The last U.S. flight sending immigrants to Venezuela was on Dec. 10, according to Human Rights First, an organization that tracks and analyzes deportations, though the U.S. has not publicly announced their suspension. Caracas had previously stopped accepting flights in March 2025, after the Trump administration revoked Chevron’s license to pump petroleum in Venezuela, and again later in the year over U.S. military activity in the Caribbean.

The deportations of Venezuelan detainees to Mexico appear to be part of the Trump administration’s aggressive expansion of deportations of immigrants to countries that are not their own, which the administration has negotiated with several countries. Deported and detained Venezuelans, as well as their family members, said immigration agents offered to send them to countries like Honduras, Colombia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, as well as Uganda, an East African nation with no shared language or cultural ties to Venezuela.

The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions about how many Venezuelans it had sent to Mexico this year or under what agreement. Top Mexican immigration officials did not respond to Herald queries about how many Venezuelans U.S. authorities had sent south of the border, whether they would be able to go to the Mexican capital to access consular services, and why they were being transported to southern states with a strong presence of organized crime. The Human Rights Office within the Mexican immigration agency referred the Herald to its communications department.

In an email obtained by the Herald, an Immigration Customs and Enforcement officer told relatives of Vergara Flores that he had been sent to Mexico on Dec. 25 because “all flights to Venezuela are on hold until further notice.” The email’s timing coincided with the U.S. military ramp-up in the Caribbean that culminated in Maduro’s capture in Caracas on Saturday.

“The breaking point for us was when we requested bond [in immigration court] and it was denied, when accused rapists and murderers (in the criminal system) are granted bail,” Vergara Flores said, referring to his own case. His wife, Jennyfer Carrillo, added: “We mean nothing to them.”

Vulnerability in Mexico

July Rodriguez, who founded an organization supporting Venezuelan immigrants in Mexico, has documented at least two different waves of Venezuelans deported from the U.S. since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

The first took place in March when Maduro temporarily blocked deportation flights and the Trump administration sent over 200 Venezuelans it accused of being gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador. In December, advocates witnessed another round of deportations to Mexico.

Mexican authorities have stopped sending deported immigrants to Tapachula, a southwestern city, “because organized crime brazenly took over the state of Chiapas, and many Mexicans have had to leave Chiapas, displaced to Guatemala,” Rodriguez told the Herald. But Villahermosa, the new destination, has experienced an explosion in violent crime in recent years.

Leaving Venezuelans in southern Mexico also makes it harder for them to obtain travel documents, since the country has only one Venezuelan consulate, located in Mexico City, a 12-hour bus ride away. There are also fewer legal resources to help deported migrants legalize their status compared to other parts of Mexico.

“The level of vulnerability Venezuelans face in Mexico is extremely serious,” Rodríguez said. “There is no clear policy that allows them to leave the country. Many choose to leave on foot or by bus through Guatemala. Others risk their lives trying to reach Mexico City, while some remain in Mexico with no support.”

‘A nightmare’

Vergara Flores, 36, was among those dropped off in the middle of the night in Villahermosa. He has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and another degree in informatics. He was building a stable life with his wife and had even purchased a home after entering the U.S. in 2022 through the Mexican border.

ICE detained him during a routine check-in appointment in June, after he had attended them without issues six other times. In detention, Vergara Flores lost weight and hair due to stress, lack of sunlight and unhealthy food, he said. Nearly seven months later, on Christmas day, he was among dozens deported to Mexico.

The couple’s new house is now on the market.

“He lived only one month in the house,” Carrillo said. “His detention shook our lives and turned it upside down. It was a nightmare that we never thought we would experience. We fought until the very end.”

Vergara Flores had been a beneficiary Temporary Protected Status beneficiary until April, when the Trump administration began its efforts to strip the deportation protections of over 600,000 Venezuelans.

Carrillo realized her husband was slated for deportation when she could no longer find him in the system she used to send him money while in detention. Friends and relatives of other detainees started sharing on a WhatsApp group that their loved ones were being sent to Mexico.

Vergara Flores is currently waiting for his Venezuelan passport to arrive so he can leave Mexico. Without it, he would be forced to travel by foot or bus toward the Guatemalan border—a dangerous route where criminal groups target migrants.

“He was scared,” his wife said. “I’m still scared for him, but we are starting to see the light.”

Deportations on hold

On the U.S. side of the border, there are Venezuelan waiting for pending court hearings and defending their asylum claims. But those who have already signed voluntary departure documents — often after prolonged detention that detainees, families, and advocates say has taken a toll on migrants’ physical and mental health — have no such option. Vergara Flores, desperate to get out of detention, signed paperwork to depart voluntarily. But he believed he would be sent to Venezuela, not Mexico.

Freddy Villegas, a 31-year-old computer engineer, is among those detained who say the Trump administration offered a one-way ticket to a third country. He fled persecution from paramilitary groups in Caracas in 2021 and entered the United States later that year. He applied for asylum in August 2022, citing threats and fear of return to Venezuela. While his asylum case was still pending, he was granted TPS.

On July 1, ICE detained Villegas during a check-in appointment. He continues to fight for asylum and told the Herald that ICE officials told Venezuelans and Cubans at his detention center that it would be difficult to get their countries’ governments to take them back.

“They offered us the option to resettle in another country, such as Colombia or Mexico, but I refused,” Villegas said. He said he would rather remain in ICE custody, even though his health has suffered, than be sent to a third country or returned to Venezuela, where he fears persecution.

Villegas said he has lost 22 pounds during his detention and developed a vitiligo-like condition, which he attributes in part to prolonged confinement and limited access to sunlight. Some other Venezuelans, however, eventually became exhausted by their circumstances and agreed to be sent to Mexico.

Persecution by guerrillas

Venezuelans deported to Mexico are charting their next steps, but not having legal status there or documentation can make it difficult. The Trump administration deported Edgar Sosa Rojas, 47, without his Venezuelan passport, his wife, Maria Stella Ferrer, told the Herald. That has made leaving Mexico difficult.

Sosa Rojas first fled persecution in Venezuela in 2014, seeking refuge with his family in Colombia, where his wife was born. But safety there was short-lived. A guerrilla group kidnapped Sosa Rojas in December 2023 and later released him in Mexico, according to his wife and documents the Herald reviewed.

The Herald reviewed complaints filed with Colombian government agencies, as well as records from the Institute for Women in Migration, a Mexican organization that advocates for migrant women’s rights in Mexico and the United States.

He sought asylum in the U.S. in 2024, but authorities detained him in August and sent him to Mexico, where he was dropped off near the Guatemalan border.

He is now retracing the same dangerous route through Central America that once brought him to the United States, heading back toward the Colombia–Venezuela border, his wife said. Ferrer fears he could be kidnapped by cartels along the way, again.

“The United States was supposed to be the safest country,” his wife said. “But they deported him instead.”

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