A family of asylum seekers who reunited in Venezuela after being separated by immigration detention is struggling in the midst of ruined buildings and broken infrastructure after their region was struck last month by two of the most severe earthquakes Latin America has experienced.
Osmary Garcia, a mother of six who had been living in Detroit, was arrested by immigration officers in February and held at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan. The Biden-era asylum program she and her family entered the U.S. through was cancelled, invalidating their work permits and drivers’ licenses.
Her husband, Hector Marin, was afraid that he and his six children could face a similar fate, and so he stayed home from work and his kids stayed home from school.
“The truth is we really love this country,” Marin said just days before the family boarded a flight that took them away from the life they had built in the U.S. “We still love the country. But if it is God's will for us to return in order for all of us to be together, then that's what we'll do.”
The family had a joyful reunion in the Caracas airport, and while they remained grateful that they were together, they faced many challenges as they tried to start over in Venezuela – a country two of their children had never before seen.
The family lived in a house with cement walls that was only partially finished, fending off mosquitos and taking turns sleeping since they didn’t have enough mattresses for all of them.
Then, just weeks after they arrived, Venezuela was hit by twin earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.2 and 7.5. La Guaira, the region where Marin, Garcia, and their kids lived, was the hardest hit.
Thousands have been killed as a consequence and tens of thousands left injured or missing. Millions more face potentially devastating humanitarian conditions, according to the United Nations.
Marin, his wife, and children were unhurt, but the earthquake destabilized the house they were living in. They haven’t been able to retrieve all of their belongings and, like many of their neighbors, have been sleeping on the street.
“The situation is really depressing,” Garcia told Michigan Public in a voice memo. “It’s been very traumatizing for the children. They’ve seen people that have been pulled out [from the rubble] without limbs.”
The Trump administration promised a $2,600 stipend to anyone who “self-deported” through its CBP Home program. A few weeks after they left the U.S., only one of Marin’s children had gotten that money. The rest of their payments were issued after Michigan Public reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to inquire about the delay.
The stipends provide a life-changing sum of money in a country where hyperinflation has made more adults struggle to purchase enough food than in any other country in Latin America or the Caribbean – and that was before the earthquakes.
Still, Marin has only been able to collect three of the stipends that remained unpaid. He said banks have told him that he’s already been paid for the full amount he was owed from the CBP One program, but Marin said three of his children have not yet received their stipends.
