Fleeing Maduro, Venezuelans find nightmare in border jails
MIAMI — When Jose Ramon Zambrano and his pregnant wife crossed the Rio Grande to apply for asylum in the U.S., they were looking for a fresh start far away from certain arrest in his native Venezuela, where his mother was a prominent government opponent.
Instead, he spent six months locked up in Texas, separated from a newborn son.
“Crossing the border in search of protection isn’t a crime,” Mr. Zambrano said from a detention center near Houston. “We do it because we need to.”
Mr. Zambrano is one of hundreds of Venezuelans fleeing the socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro and showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border in larger numbers in recent months, only to encounter President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.
But unlike even larger waves of migrants from Mexico and Central America, the Venezuelans at the border have put the Trump administration in a tight spot.
Most of them have been jailed for extended periods or sent back to Mexico to languish in dangerous border towns while awaiting their immigration cases in the U.S., despite proclamations from the Trump administration that it supports people escaping brutal conditions under Mr. Maduro.
While Mr. Trump has been leading the campaign to oust Mr. Maduro — praising opposition leader Juan Guaido as a “very brave man who carries with him the hopes, dreams and aspirations of all Venezuelans” — critics say he has done little to shield Venezuelans from his immigration policies.
Specifically, he’s rejected calls by Democrats and even some Republican allies, such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, to grant humanitarian protections to those escaping political and economic turmoil.
Nationwide some 850 Venezuelans remain behind bars, held in detention centers as the Trump administration has no way of handing them over to the heavily sanctioned socialist government of Mr. Maduro, which it no longer recognizes. More than 2,000 were returned across the border as part of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program.
The number of Venezuelans entering the U.S. is rising as part of a mass wave that has seen almost 5 million leave the oil-rich nation, the bulk to neighboring Latin American countries. Although many are fleeing economic chaos, not political persecution, the United Nations has urged countries to grant them refugee status.
In the past year, Venezuelans have made up 30% of all 82,807 asylum claims lodged by people who were not in deportation proceedings. Arrests of Venezuelans for entering the country illegally on the Mexican border spiked to 2,202 during the 2019 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up from 62 during the previous 12-month period, according to Customs and Border Protection. Venezuelans are also among the nationalities with the highest number of people who overstay their visas.
The issue has become a political hot potato for Mr. Guaido as well.
Critics say Mr. Guaido, whom Mr. Trump recognizes as Venezuela’s rightful leader, is covering for the U.S. president so as not to risk valuable political support in his sputtering, yearold campaign against Mr. Maduro. They point out that Mr. Guaido didn’t publicly raise the issue in his recent weeklong trip to the U.S.
“The job of a government is to take care of its citizens, not make political favors,” said Edinson Calderon, a LGBTQ immigrant activist in New York who fled Venezuela in 2015 after being tortured by security forces.
Like most migrants, Mr. Calderon was at first an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Guaido. But he has since turned into a fierce critic.
Like Mr. Zambrano, all of the the 208 detainee cases he’s documented have deportation orders. But with all flights to Venezuela banned since May, they are unlikely to be removed any time soon.
“At the end of the day, we’re all victims,” said Mr. Vecchio, who fled Venezuela himself to escape what were widely seen as madeup charges of inciting violence during 2014 anti-government protests.
Meanwhile, the length of detention for Venezuelans is growing longer, to an average 82 days from 56 in 2019.
Among those who Mr. Vecchio met at a detention center just outside Houston was Mr. Zambrano.
He was detained for six months and was granted parole last week, allowing him to quickly travel to Orlando to meet his 4-month-old son, Matthew, for the first time.
Until his release Wednesday, his mother, Cioly Zambrano, journeyed to see him every few weeks for a single hour. She credits Mr. Vecchio’s pressure to securing her son’s release, but his future remains uncertain because his deportation order hasn’t been lifted.
“We Venezuelans have a moral debt to President Trump and all American families,” said Mrs. Zambrano, holding back tears while recalling long nights worrying about her son. “But we also need their help.”