Returning Venezuelans in squalid quarantine face uncertain future

When Jhoel Brito headed back to Venezuela last week he sought safe haven from an epoch-making global health emergency that has paralysed scores of countries and claimed more than 120,000 lives.

After losing his job as a butcher in Colombia, the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant believed he would be safer waiting out the coronavirus storm back home.

But the reality of his forced homecoming has proved a shock.

“The government was saying they’d help us, but it’s all lies,” complained Brito, who crossed back into Venezuela on 5 April — and was immediately herded by authorities into an abandoned schoolhouse in the border town of Urea.

“They’ve got us here like prisoners, locked in,” said Brito, who now sleeps on the dirty floor of a room shared with 16 other people.

“There are about 500 of us … 10 to 20 people in each room,” added Brito, who said internees included pregnant women and babies.

“Food’s not arriving, there’s hardly any water. It’s really bad,” he complained.

Millions of impoverished Venezuelans have abandoned their economically devastated country in recent years, fanning out across Latin America in search of survival.

In recent days Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, has trumpeted the timid reversal of that trend caused by the coronavirus as proof of his revolution’s strength and compassion.

“They want to come back … and I say to them: ‘Brothers and sisters! Welcome! The homeland welcomes you with open arms,’” Maduro said in a recent broadcast, predicting 15,000 exiles would return from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Maduro said he had ordered officials in the border state of T’chira to greet returnees with “love and affection” as well as blood tests to prove they were not importing the coronavirus.

But migrants in Urea claimed they had instead found dire, unsanitary conditions in which they feared the coronavirus could easily spread.

Photographs shared with the Guardian showed scenes of squalor: blocked toilets, muddy bathroom floors and people sleeping on the ground of the derelict building.

“We had no idea they were going to make us stay here. There are a lot of us and we know that because of this virus this shouldn’t be happening,” said Thais Colmenares, a 24-year-old migrant from Venezuela’s Mérida state.

Colmenares decided to return home last week after losing her job as a waitress in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, when the city went into lockdown.

She headed home with little but a giant cuddly panda for the three-year-old daughter she had been forced to leave behind when she fled abroad in search of a better life.

But with Colmenares trapped in compulsory quarantine, that reunion will have to wait.

“We hardly have water to wash ourselves or to drink. The conditions for showering and sleeping aren’t fit for purpose,” she said.

Upon arrival, Venezuelan authorities told returnees they would be held for two weeks before being allowed to travel home, but there has since been no confirmation of this, returnees told the Guardian.

Felipe Muoz, Colombia’s presidential adviser on the migration crisis said it was “a huge mistake” for Venezuelans to be heading to the border during the pandemic and believes that most of those who have left will end up back in Colombia in coming weeks.

“Venezuela doesn’t have the capacity to take these people in. The (Venezuelan) government has forced the governor of T’chira to accept all these people,” Muoz claimed.

He said Venezuelan authorities had so far admitted about 3,000 returnees but predicted “there will surely be more in the coming days.”

“From the information we have, the conditions in which they are being received are really serious, so that’s why I hope that during this time of pandemic, Venezuelans think twice before putting themselves at risk during the journey and when they get there,” Muoz added.

The governor of T’chira, Laidy Gomez, did not respond to several requests for comment.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said its officials were trying to dissuade Venezuelans in Colombia from returning.

“There is no capacity in the border to receive them,” said Jozef Merkx, the group’s representative there.

Rubén Rueda, a 25-year-old migrant from T’chira, arrived at the border on Sunday, after 18 months in Colombia, and is also being held in the disused school. “It’s just crazy,” he said. “There are no beds. For the first three days, every single person here slept on the floor. There’s about 500 people here now and only 40 beds, so they go to those who most need them.”

He decided to return home after losing his job because of Colombia’s lockdown, which is due to last until at least 27 April.

“If I had known it was going to be like this (in Venezuela), I wouldn’t have come. But I was anxious and I wanted to get home to my mum,” Rueda said.