Venezuelan asylum seekers worry about what comes next

MIAMI - Mr Alejandro Marcano Santelli fled his home country in 2009 after receiving death threats.

He had worked for a news outlet that opposed the Venezuelan government and its eventual leader, Mr Nicolás Maduro, who was

captured by the United States

and brought to New York on Jan 3 to face drug charges.

Mr Marcano Santelli, 57, who lives in Miami, said a feeling of immense joy washed over him when he heard the news of Mr Maduro’s removal from Venezuela.

More than 15 years ago, he and his family obtained asylum in the US within days and, then, eventually, citizenship.

With Mr Maduro in power, however, Mr Marcano Santelli had not been able to return to Venezuela, as his mother had lost her memory and died. He has not seen his brother in nearly two decades.

Still, he realised that the reaction in the community around him had been much more mixed, as the immigration status of many Venezuelans, a majority of whom have entered the United States in the past decade, has become increasingly tenuous.

“There is pain and happiness, but above all, worry,” Mr Marcano Santelli said.

Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled their troubled country, the largest exodus in Latin America’s modern history and one of the largest crises of forced displacement in the world.

As of June, about 1.1 million had come to live in United States, including about 600,000 immigrants through a humanitarian programme known as Temporary Protected Status.

Many Americans did not begin paying attention to the plight of Venezuelans until migration levels reached record heights under the Biden administration.

As local and state officials struggled to shelter and assist migrants in major cities and in overcrowded shelters along the southern border, President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of carrying out mass deportations of migrants.

Soon after taking office, Trump administration officials moved to end TPS protection for Venezuelans, a decision the Supreme Court has allowed to stand for now as litigation continues.

After the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, the administration halted all asylum petitions and immigration applications filed for immigrants from 19 countries. The affected countries were those whose citizens it had restricted from travel to the United States in 2026, including Venezuela.

Ms Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, made clear in a statement to The New York Times on Jan 4 that the administration had no intention of restoring the TPS programme, saying it had for decades “been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty programme”.

Ms McLaughlin added that Ms Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, “will use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritise the safety of Americans”.

Speaking to Fox News on Jan 4, Ms Noem said every Venezuelan TPS holder “has the opportunity to apply for refugee status” and that an evaluation would follow.

But the Trump administration last year set the refugee admission cap for fiscal year 2026 to a historic low of no more than 7,500 refugees. The previous ceiling, set by the Biden administration, was 125,000.

Trump administration officials have framed the measures as efforts to combat fraud and abuse in the national immigration system and to enhance national security.

Immigration lawyers and Venezuelan American leaders have countered that the moves have been tainted with racial animus and sought to falsely cast a broad swath of the Venezuelan diaspora as criminals and terrorists.

On Jan 4, Mr Trump repeated familiar talking points, conflating immigration with crime and drug trafficking, as he denounced gangs and criminal organisations that he said had inflicted crime and terror in American cities.

“As I’ve said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives,” Mr Trump said.

At the same time, he added, among the most significant beneficiaries of the US operation would be those who “got thrown out of Venezuela that are now in the United States”.

“Some want to stay, and some probably want to go back,” he said.

Ms Adelys Ferro, a founder of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, a grassroots group representing Venezuelan interests in the United States, said that, as some Venezuelans were taking to the streets to celebrate, some others were staying inside, worried about immigration raids.

Despite entering the country under humanitarian programs once considered safe and legal, their lives have been thrust into uncertainty, Ms Ferro said.

“We are victims of the Nicolás Maduro regime, but we are also victims of the Trump administration policies,” she said.

In a statement on Jan 3, Ms Eileen Higgins, the newly elected mayor of Miami, called on the Trump administration to reinstate the TPS program, describing the decision to end it as “dangerous, reckless and wrong”.

Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about whether the administration would raise the refugee cap as it evaluates petitions from Venezuelan TPS holders or whether TPS holders will be able to apply for the status from within the United States.

Under US law, a person must apply from outside the country to be admitted as a refugee.

Legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind the TPS program have been led by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

Mr Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a lawyer with the centre, said the instability in Venezuela underscored why TPS holders should be allowed to remain in the United States.

Declarations entered in the case say that Venezuelan TPS holders pay taxes and contribute to Social Security, and that they tend to hold jobs and to obtain higher education at greater rates than the broader American population.

In Manhattan, Mr Jose, a cook from Venezuela, said that he had applied for asylum and TPS as soon as he arrived in the United States in 2022. His TPS has expired, and his asylum case has been pending in bogged-down immigration courts.

Since his last hearing in December, he has had to wear an ankle monitor.

On Jan 3, he said he was feeling overjoyed that Mr Maduro had been toppled, but that he was concerned about what would come next in Venezuela.

Mr Maduro’s reign, for Venezuelans inside and outside the country, elicits memories of food shortages, poor public services and economic decline.

“We still don’t know what is going to happen,” said Mr Jose, who asked that only his first name be used for fear of retaliation from immigration authorities. “I want to wait it out here.”

At a cafe in the Queens borough of New York on Jan 3, Ms Rose Ramírez, 28, of Guarico, Venezuela, said she had been experiencing indescribable emotions since videos of the bombing in her native country began circulating overnight.

“If I had to choose one word to describe this moment, I would say it’s one of great joy and hope that we will have a more prosperous country,” said Ms Ramírez, while caring for her 4-month-old son, who was in a stroller.

But Ms Ramírez, who arrived in New York a little over a year ago and was still seeking asylum, also said a new period of uncertainty was now beginning.

“I think we will continue to be in limbo,” she said. “I would like to think that there will now be better cooperation and a better understanding of our legal situation here, but the truth is that it will take time for order to be restored.” NYTIMES