Humberto Castro, a 59-year-old Venezuelan, was driving to work as usual from his home in Doral, where he has lived for eight years, when he was stopped by agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“My dad has his work permit valid until 2030. His asylum is pending. He was going to work, driving normally, and they stopped and handcuffed him,” says his daughter, Arianna Castro, 29 years old. The man arrived in the US with a visa and has a pending asylum application, according to his daughter. He has no criminal record.
Castro’s case comes amid a wave of immigrant arrests in South Florida that has raised alarms among the largest Venezuelan community in the United States. He is now demanding answers and concrete measures from his representatives in Congress, less than three months before the midterm elections.
Two of the main exile organizations, Venezuelans Persecuted Politically in Exile (Veppex) and the Multicultural Association of Activists Voice and Expression (Amavex), have prepared a report that they have sent to congressmen and senators requesting an investigation into the detentions of Venezuelans with pending asylum applications and other immigration processes.
The report states that Venezuelans in the US have been affected by the elimination of temporary and humanitarian protections, and that people with pending asylum applications and other processes are being detained for deportation, even to distant third countries such as Liberia. It also points out that authorities do not publish records on how many detained Venezuelans have criminal records or open immigration cases.
As a reference, the report notes that by July there were about 65,765 people in ICE custody, of whom more than 70% had no criminal record. It also documents at least three cases of Venezuelans detained between July and August who had work authorization and pending asylum cases.
Helen Villalonga, president of Amavex, says that the immigration policy of the Donald Trump Administration has “brutally hurt” the community.
Almost half of the population of Doral, a city in Miami-Dade County, is Venezuelan. The municipality signed a 287(g) agreement to collaborate with immigration last year.
A large part of the Venezuelan community in South Florida supported Trump in the last elections, expecting that he would increase pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s regime and that the mass deportation campaign he promised would be directed at criminals and people linked to Chavismo, Villalonga points out. Now, even Venezuelans linked to the Republican Party have called her after publishing the report to say: “This was not what we voted for. This was not what we were expecting,” she notes.
Villalonga indicates that the report aims to put pressure on South Florida congressmen before the November elections. Although some legislators have shown sympathy for the Venezuelan cause, it has not translated into solutions, and the report calls for concrete results, she points out. Legislators have not acknowledged receipt after the report was sent, she states.
“We are already tired of [legislators] speaking through their social networks or sending a letter. What we need are immediate actions within Congress, actions within the Department of Homeland Security, within the State Department,” she says.
The report demands that Congress hold oversight hearings on the detentions of Venezuelans, as well as DHS and ICE reports with data on the nationalities of detainees, whether they had criminal records and pending immigration cases, in addition to an audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on airport arrests. It also demands that DHS and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) review each case individually and seek alternatives for people who have no criminal record and comply with their immigration processes other than detention.
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“It seems that everything we have been asking for, the Administration has done the opposite,” says José Antonio Colina, president of Veppex. “We agree that [the Government] wants to enforce US immigration laws, that seems fine to me. What we don’t think is right is that they try to criminalize Venezuelan immigration.”
The Administration has taken measures that have left many people in an illegal situation, Colina points out. “Many of those who applied for political asylum are now being detained because that is not a status.”
In his opinion, legislators “have to move from communication to action, because actions and facts show that they have been neither forceful nor consistent.”
“I particularly believe that they [South Florida legislators] have no power within the White House at this time. They are not listened to,” he says. Representatives María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, and Mario Díaz-Balart, Republicans, did not respond to requests for comment for this report. DHS also did not respond.
Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz told EL PAÍS that she is “deeply concerned about the recent ICE offensive to arrest Venezuelans, Haitians, and other law-abiding immigrants at airports” and that she has communicated with DHS about several issues related to ICE, “including the increase of their operations at airports and in our communities,” and so far has not received any concrete response.
Wasserman Schultz’s office added that several reports “have shown an increase in ICE activity at airports, and not only against Venezuelans,” but that for GAO to initiate an investigation, it must be requested by “senior Congressional leaders and chairs or senior members of the minority of committees or subcommittees with jurisdiction” over the matter. “Otherwise, requests are usually denied or go unanswered. The congresswoman does not belong to any of those categories regarding ICE oversight, but she is exploring the options available to her to promote a more rigorous investigation and oversight.”
The point focuses on two Miami legislators with oversight positions in Congress: Giménez, who chairs the Homeland Security subcommittee responsible for airport security, and Salazar, who chairs the Western Hemisphere Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over relations with Latin America.
Since January last year, at the beginning of Trump’s second term, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans that the Joe Biden Government had extended until October 2026, and humanitarian programs. Then DHS ended the TPS designations of 2021 and 2023. More recently, the anti-immigrant offensive has expanded to people with pending asylum cases that allowed them to have a work permit. Now ICE agents are detaining people whose asylum cases are still pending, but their visas have expired. DHS has also allowed certain asylum cases to go directly to immigration courts, without an interview with USCIS.
The three Republican legislators from South Florida asked last year that Venezuelans without criminal records who had fled Chavismo persecution be treated differently, and promised to “do everything possible” to protect them. Giménez asked Noem in January for a “case-by-case solution” for exiles, and Salazar promoted a bipartisan bill to grant TPS to Venezuelans “who respect the law.” Last March, Salazar again called for protection for Venezuelans.
Maduro was captured in January in a military operation and is detained in New York awaiting trial. His vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is acting as caretaker. The US and Venezuela restored diplomatic relations in March and this Friday President Trump announced an agreement under which the United States takes control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves, more than double the US reserves.
Meanwhile, Ariana Castro says her father is detained at the ICE offices in Miramar, north of Miami, and is trying to get him released on bail. “It feels totally unreal. We came looking for a better life and all we have done is work, build a life here, and contribute to the community. My sister graduated from college, I also graduated; I am a nurse. Now my husband doesn’t want me to leave the house. It’s strange to go back to that fear we once had in Venezuela, that we couldn’t go out because we would be persecuted. You can’t live like that,” she adds.
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