If we could just see the rubble, I'd be satisfied
Abelardo Rincón, 23, was deported after six years building a life in Georgia; he called family upon arrival then went missing when earthquakes hit the hotel housing deportees. Flight 164 carried 19 women and 7 children; some survived but were trapped under rubble for hours, while families searched morgues and hospitals with minimal official assistance.
- Flight 164 carried 141+ Venezuelans deported from the US; landed June 24, 2024
- Twin earthquakes struck Venezuela hours later, killing 2,200+ and leaving 50,000 missing
- Deportees housed at Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira; building collapsed
- Anderson Daniel Salcedo trapped under rubble for 40 hours; both legs amputated
Over 140 Venezuelans deported from the US arrived in their homeland on June 24, only to be struck by twin earthquakes hours later that killed 2,200+ people. Families desperately search for missing deportees with limited information from authorities.
Abelardo Rincón was 23 years old and had spent six years building something in Georgia—a job at a car dealership, a marriage, the anticipation of his daughter's birth. Then US immigration authorities detained him during President Trump's enforcement push, and everything he'd constructed began to collapse. His parents and pregnant wife waited for news while he sat in custody. On June 24, he boarded Flight 164 alongside more than 140 other Venezuelans being sent back to a country most had left behind. When the plane touched down, Rincón called his family in Atlanta to say he'd made it home. He was still in state custody, housed with other deportees at Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, a coastal city. Within hours, twin earthquakes tore through Venezuela. The ground killed at least 2,200 people, injured more than 10,000, and left 50,000 missing according to UN estimates. Rincón vanished into that number.
His grandfather, Jose Rincón, spent days searching. He walked through morgues in Caracas, viewing at least 200 bodies. He tried to reach the hotel where his grandson had been staying, but Venezuelan authorities turned him away, telling him there was no life at the site. "If we could just see what we need to see—if I could see the rubble, I'd be satisfied—but days have gone by and I still haven't found him, alive or dead," the grandfather told the BBC. "So what am I supposed to do?" The question hung unanswered. Flight 164 carried 19 women and seven children. Many had called relatives the moment they landed, a brief window of contact before the earthquakes struck. Darwin Eliecer Serrano Lopez, 35, phoned his cousin at 5:32 in the morning to say he was back after four years away. The first quake hit thirty minutes later. His cousin Paola Chacón said the family drove through the night searching hospitals and morgues. By Monday, nearly a week had passed with no sign of him. "So many days have passed… we aren't getting any answers," she said. But the family had already resigned itself. "We are going to stay here until we can take Darwin's body home."
Daniel Alejandro Nunez, 28, had also called his mother upon arrival. His stepfather, Jose Alejandro Abache, searched everywhere—hospitals, morgues, the rubble itself. Conflicting reports came and went. Nothing solid. Mildrey Sarazo, Serrano Lopez's wife, hadn't seen her husband in three years. On Monday she still hadn't told their daughters, aged nine and 15, what had happened. She was waiting for proof, waiting to identify him, waiting to bury him. "He didn't want to come back yet," she said of her husband. "We want them to hand him over so we can identify him and be certain."
Not all the deportees died. Some survived the collapse. Lisbeth Portillo, 58, was lying on a bed in a second-floor room shared with 16 other women when the building crumbled. "I saw the woman next to me start to fall… they were all screaming for help," she told the Associated Press. "I was born again—God gave me a second chance." But survival came with its own devastation. Anderson Daniel Salcedo, 22, had lived in the US for three years, sending money home to his family. He was on Flight 164, then trapped under rubble for nearly two days. When his mother finally found him at Caracas's university hospital, she discovered his legs had already been amputated. "He spent 40 hours in that hole, he didn't have an ID, they couldn't account for him because he had no documents," his grandmother Marlene Lozano told Reuters. "We had no way to communicate with him and didn't know anything." She added: "Here we are praying, asking God to give him strength and courage. We know he won't be the same anymore—he's missing his legs—but we love him, just the way he is."
The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying the flight had reached Venezuela safely and that all passengers had been returned home. When asked for details about the deportees caught in the disaster, a DHS spokesperson told the BBC: "When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them." The Venezuelan government posted phone numbers for the public to call, but information remained scarce in the wake of such catastrophe. Families already separated for years by immigration status now faced the possibility of permanent loss—not from the system that had torn them apart, but from the earth itself, in the hours after they were forced to return.
Notable Quotes
If we could just see what we need to see—if I could see the rubble, I'd be satisfied—but days have gone by and I still haven't found him, alive or dead.— Jose Rincón, grandfather of missing deportee Abelardo Rincón
He spent 40 hours in that hole, he didn't have an ID, they couldn't account for him because he had no documents. We had no way to communicate with him and didn't know anything.— Marlene Lozano, grandmother of survivor Anderson Daniel Salcedo
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the timing matter so much here? These people were deported, they arrived, they called home—and then the earthquakes hit. Is that just terrible luck, or is there something else?
The timing is everything because it collapses two separate traumas into one. These families had already endured years of separation, the arrest, the detention, the deportation itself. For a moment—maybe just hours—they had their loved ones back. They heard their voices. Then that was taken away again, but this time by something no one could have predicted or prevented. The cruelty isn't intentional, but it's real.
The US government says they're not responsible once the deportees left custody. Does that argument hold up?
Legally, maybe. Morally, it's harder to defend. These were people the US government had detained and forcibly removed. The government knew where they were being housed. The moment they landed, they were vulnerable in a way they hadn't been before—in a country many hadn't lived in for years, in a hotel near the coast, with no documents, no resources. The argument that responsibility ends at the airport door feels thin when you're talking about people who had no choice in being there.
What strikes you most about the survivors' stories?
The specificity of the suffering. Anderson Salcedo trapped for 40 hours without ID, so no one could even find him to help. Lisbeth Portillo watching the woman next to her fall. These aren't abstract numbers—they're people who lived through something unimaginable and came out changed forever. And their families had to process all of it at once: relief that they survived, horror at what survival cost them.
The families are still searching, still waiting for answers. What does that waiting feel like?
It's a kind of limbo that doesn't resolve. Jose Rincón viewed 200 bodies and still doesn't know. Mildrey Sarazo hasn't even told her daughters yet. They're stuck between hope and acceptance, between the need to search and the exhaustion of searching with no answers. The Venezuelan government can't help. The US government won't. So they wait.