Caracas Chronicles

This week, a wave of panic exploded from the part of Miami where Venezuelans tend to concentrate, ripping across social media and media outlets in Venezuela and abroad. 

ICE ramped up the hunt, and hundreds of families in the City of Doral, which in the past had requested asylum or TPS measures, faced the crossroads of hiding or self-deporting. But the persecution is not limited to Florida, similar stories are being shared from all over the United States.

While videos show the empty streets and the ICE trucks waiting, like predators in the woods, diaspora organizations warn people on social media to be extremely cautious while repeating their arguments about how unfair and inhumane this human hunt is, and testimonies from Venezuelans in Miami and other cities, told with fear and on the condition of anonymity, expose the economic and human costs of the anti immigration campaign of the Trump administration. 

Deportation Depot

Luis Alejandro Olarte, 19, and his father, Luis Felipe, were taken into ICE custody on September 1st on their way for what should’ve been Luis’ sophomore year move-in. His mother, Anais, described the sequence of events and conditions in which her son and husband are held through the GoFundMe she launched to raise money for legal fees and bonds. She had asked his son to drive to college rather than fly, concerned about the heightened presence of ICE agents in airports.

Agents pulled them over on Interstate 95 in St. Johns County, Florida, while driving up to Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where Luis holds a full QuestBridge scholarship. Shortly after, Luis’ mother received a single text from her son: “We have just been detained by ICE, I love you.”

Luis Alejandro and Luis Felipe are currently held at Baker Correctional Institute in Sanderson, Florida, a facility nicknamed “Deportation Depot.” On the phone, they tell Anais about the oppressive heat and the poor food rations. She says her family arrived legally on visas in 2018 and has an asylum hearing already scheduled. They attended every appointment, always held a valid work permit, and had no criminal or arrest record.

Their case may soon be the rule rather than the exception: the State Department is expected to announce what could be the greatest mass visa revocation in US history in the coming weeks. It could affect up to 200,000 people on B1 or B2 visas (the standard visitor visas for tourism, business, family, or medical visits) issued between 2016 and 2026 who have sought or are actively seeking asylum.

“What will happen if they get me? Will I be sent to Venezuela, where a soldier pointed a rifle at me when I was taking part in a demonstration at 16? Or to El Salvador, to Africa?”

Other cases show a common pattern: we did everything right; now we are being considered criminals. 

“I am 23,” a Venezuelan man told Caracas Chronicles, “and arrived in the US when I was 15. All my life is here. My family and I have been waiting for an appointment to apply for asylum. I just want a chance”.

“I just had a baby”, says a Venezuelan woman in the US, “but because of the extreme anxiety I’ve been suffering for months, I can’t go out. After ten years in this country, doing everything right and still waiting for residence, I can’t stand the fact that I’m seen as a criminal, that some people are literally chasing us.” 

Another woman arrived with her parents when she was 18, ten years ago. They applied for asylum, still pending. When she married her boyfriend, a US resident, she found she lost the protection under her family’s migratory status. Then the Trump administration cancelled the TPS they had also applied for. Now, no lawyer can tell her whether her work permit is still valid, and she has to lie to her employer. “ICE is apprehending people in the city where I live and the city where I work”, she says, “and even they pick people up at the bus stops after they left their kids to get the school bus. I know people with legal status, captured by ICE. What will happen if they get me? Will I be sent to Venezuela, where a soldier pointed a rifle at me when I was taking part in a demonstration at 16? Or to El Salvador, to Africa? Will I be taken to those ICE detention centers, in a cell crammed with desperate people, eating food that has cockroaches on it? I just don’t know, and I’m not going to work or to college, and my husband is terrified about me just going to the patio to pick some tomatoes.”

A family with two kids in a Florida suburb is in total disarray. ICE arrested the father. The mother refuses to go out, knowing ICE is searching for her. The two kids can go to school only if they get out through the patio, walk along a canal, slip to the patio of an American neighbor, and go with her, hidden in her car’s trunk. 

Doralzuela under ICE

In the Venezuelan enclave of Doral, residents reported sustained and increased activity of ICE and Border Patrol vehicles for the past two months through ICEOUT.org, a community-run platform used to report and map immigration-enforcement activity. They describe agents stopping people and asking them to provide proof of residency or US citizenship, while other reports describe the detention of people who have ongoing immigration cases.

The uncertainty is visibly reshaping how people live in the city, with locals describing it as a ghost town in the past weeks. A Venezuelan woman working at a cell phone shop around NW 41st St told Diario Las Américas that the store now serves around 3 customers a day, down from up to 30. At the end of her shift, the streets of the once-bustling area are empty. ICE has not said how many people it has detained in Doral specifically, nor announced any large-scale operation in the city.

Doral Mayor Christi Fraga says fear has settled over families, businesses, and entire neighborhoods: “It reached a point where we don’t know what to do.”

A report recently sent to lawmakers, Doral councilman Rafael Pineyro said, documents detentions regardless of valid work permits and pending asylum applications. “The law can be enforced without losing our humanity,” he said in a video posted on September 9th. Immigration attorney John de la Vega also described “an impressive number” of people with pending asylum cases detained. 

Pineyro sent letters to GOP representatives María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Giménez, and Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody. Pineyro, born in Caracas, explains the particular nature of Doral to the Republicans: a city where thousands of residents are foreign-born and in the middle of holding pending immigration cases, work permits, or other applications. Venezuelan organizations have separately petitioned Congress to oversee ICE’s operations and to release precise data on who has been arrested, their records, and the status of their immigration cases.

Doral’s government has tried to distance itself from these operations, especially since the backlash against city authorities after they entered a formal 287(g) cooperation agreement with ICE in 2025. The deal authorizes operational assistance “within what is considered necessary” to comply with Florida law, meaning local officers can assist with detentions, questioning, and processing of people suspected of immigration violations. Mayor Christi Fraga clarified federal agencies still have to formally request license-plate-reader data from municipal police.

Persecution, relocated 

Fraga, who voted in favor of the agreement, now says fear has settled over families, businesses, and entire neighborhoods. “It reached a point where we don’t know what to do,” she said. Some of the official responses she’s received point to a review round specifically targeting those who overstayed their visas and later applied for asylum, aligning with the pattern of the past weeks, soon to be cemented in policy by the mass visa revocations planned by the Department of State. 

And there’s still yet another front in the targeting of Venezuelan immigrants by design. On September 5, the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the asylum status of a Venezuelan woman granted protections in April 2026. The BIA then instructed immigration judges to consider Maduro’s deposition when evaluating asylum applications based on fear of future persecution.

Venezuelans who fled under Maduro must now separately prove that they’d be harmed under Delcy. Meanwhile, a former intelligence agency chief accused of countless human rights violations serves as the Venezuelan minister of defense. As proof that the country has changed, the Board cited “progress toward reform” since January. But to most Venezuelans, whether in Florida or back home, the ‘reform’ has yet to deliver real material benefits since January. While Washington continues to grant Delcy Rodríguez concessions and stretch her time in power, Venezuelans still wait for an explanation of what, exactly, has changed.