More than 100 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. were being held in a hotel in La Guaira when earthquakes struck Venezuela hours later. Survivors described escaping the rubble amid a second quake, while families are still searching for the missing and authorit
When the first shaking hit the hotel in La Guaira, Lisbeth Portillo said she didn’t understand what was happening at first. Then she heard the screams.
Portillo. 58. had been among more than 100 Venezuelans who had been deported from the United States hours earlier and were staying in the Hotel Santuario La Llanada. She said she stepped out onto a balcony to look toward the sea. only to see the sky “black” and feel the heat rise. She returned to her room, lay down, and began to feel the building move.
“I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’ and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela. “They were all screaming for help.”
She described the first quake as terrifying, then said almost immediately came a second earthquake.
“I fall and end up buried and covered by a beam. but the shaking shifted everything where I was buried and I was able to get out. ” Portillo said. She said she escaped the rubble with about 20 other deportees who walked the streets looking for help after they emerged from the building and saw people running—some naked and others barefoot. She said there was “no communication.”.
Portillo and the group reached a National Guard building, where they had a chance to call relatives.
In Venezuela, the government says more than 1,700 people were killed in the earthquakes, which struck on Wednesday with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5. La Guaira—where the hotel was located—was among the hardest-hit areas.
Portillo’s testimony is part of a widening search. The headline that has spread in the aftermath is stark: more than 100 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. and held in the hotel during their arrival are missing after the disaster.
The deportation flight that delivered them to Venezuela arrived hours before the earthquakes.
A deportation flight from Miami brought 146 Venezuelans to Venezuela. including 19 women and seven children. according to ICE Flight Monitor. an initiative of Human Rights First that tracks deportation flights. The Venezuelans were transported to a hotel in La Guaira. A video from the Venezuelan government posted on social media showed images of deportees being received by Venezuelan authorities upon arrival at the Caracas airport on Wednesday.
Portillo said the government took the deportees to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, where they underwent medical exams and got identification documents. She said they were told they would go home the next day.
She was staying on a second-floor room with 16 other women. She told MISRYOUM that when the quake began, it was unclear what was happening. After she was pulled free from beneath the beam. she said she was left with bruises all over her body and that. after she finally reached people she could contact. she was still shaken.
“I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” she said. “I am traumatized,” she added after a pause, weeping.
For families back in both countries, the shaking wasn’t the only delay.
Liliana Rojas told Telemundo that she has been trying to locate her 33-year-old partner. She said the detention center where he was held in El Paso, Texas, told her only that he was deported, and that “no one is giving an answer about anything.”
The deportation timeline adds another layer to the confusion. Portillo was caught up in what she described as part of the Trump administration’s drive for mass deportations. ICE Flight Monitor tracked 288 deportation flights to 38 countries in May, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile and the Ivory Coast. The U.S. ran 12 deportation flights to Venezuela in May, operating three days a week, according to ICE Flight Monitor. Deportation flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month pause.
Portillo, who crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in November 2021 and said she had a pending asylum claim, said she lived in South Florida for more than four years. After the earthquake buried her and she managed to get out, she tried to contact her family.
She said she couldn’t remember her children’s phone number, but she was able to call her husband in the United States.
“I said to him, ‘Cesar, I’m alive. Help me.’ And my husband kept saying, ‘It can’t be,’” Portillo said. “‘I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive,’ I told him.”
Her husband called their children, and Portillo said the family picked her up and they were able to reunite with her the following night.
Jenny Rodriguez, 24, told Telemundo that she was on the flight and was taken to the hotel. She said she was trapped under rubble and that “a colleague who had been on the same flight came by.” Rodriguez said she freed her hand from the debris. grabbed the man by his trousers. and begged for help. adding: “Thanks to God — and to him — I was able to get out of there.”.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for information from the AP.
Between the deportation process and the moments when the buildings fell, Portillo’s story circles back to the same question families are now asking: if more than 100 people vanished from the hotel after the earthquakes, where are the missing—and how can anyone reach them?
Venezuela earthquakes deportation flight Miami ICE Flight Monitor Human Rights First La Guaira hotel Hotel Santuario La Llanada missing deportees Lisbeth Portillo