A man died in a Venezuelan earthquake a day after he was deported by the United States

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Oswadelez Nunez remembers fighting with her son, Daniel, when he decided to get a tattoo when he was 24 years old. About four years later, this tattoo helped her identify Daniel’s body after he was killed in the two earthquakes that devastated Venezuela last month.

Daniel had returned to Venezuela on the day of the disaster, after being deported from the United States. From La Guaira, he called his mother from the phone of a Venezuelan intelligence officer (SEBIN), and told her he was in the country.

“He said, ‘No, mom, we’re here with the SEBIN officers,'” Nunez told CNN. He told her that he and the other deportees had eaten, had medical examinations and were scheduled to spend the night at a hotel in Macoto, La Guaira, while the administrative procedures for their repatriation were about to be completed. The next day, he made the roughly seven-hour trip to the town of El Tigre to be reunited with his mother.

This reunion never happened. About 40 minutes after his last call to his mother, the ground shook and the hotel he was staying in collapsed, trapping many of its residents under the rubble.

It is not yet clear how many of Daniel’s deported companions were killed that day – unconfirmed reports suggest it could be as many as 12.

Nationally, the disaster killed thousands of people and displaced thousands more.

The deportation flight carrying Daniel departed from Miami and landed at 10:22 a.m. local time at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Venezuela on the quake-hit Wednesday. According to figures released by Venezuelan authorities and a flight monitor for ICE, a Human Rights First project that tracks deportation flights, there were 146 people on board: 120 men, 19 women and seven children.

On the same Wednesday, Venezuela’s “repatriation” mission announced the arrival of Flight 164, saying the passengers had been received at Simón Bolívar International Airport “with dignity” and under “all necessary protocols” to ensure a “happy reunion in our nation.”

But this meeting did not last long.

After the earthquakes occurred, Nunez tried to contact the authorities, but did not receive any useful information. She then made the trip to La Guaira, where she and a team of friends and relatives took matters into their own hands — searching hospitals, clinics and morgues for Daniel.

“We would sleep two or three hours at a time and keep searching,” she said. “We would go to hospitals that had eight, nine or 10 floors, climb each floor and examine room by room.”

The search continued until Monday, when Nunez returned to the disaster site convinced that her son had not survived and that his body was still under the rubble.

Officials finally directed her to the port facility, which had been converted into an emergency morgue after countless bodies were recovered from the rubble in the days following the quake.

“When we went to retrieve my son’s body, it was complete chaos,” Nunez said. “The bodies were lying on the ground.”

Finally, Nunez found a body that matched the number she was given. It was her son, but not the face she remembered.

“Daniel’s face was completely smashed, you could see his bones,” she recounted. Nunez’s nephew went to clean Daniel’s left arm, which was still intact.

“We saw his tattoos,” Nunez said. “When he got that tattoo, I had a fight with him. But now I thank God he got it, because that’s practically how I recognized him.”

Then came the bureaucratic hurdles she had to clear, all while the grief was still fresh and painful.

“They told me the cremation and burial would be free, but we would have to wait 10 to 30 days,” Nunez said. Unable to wait up to a month, she ended up paying $680 to a private cremator to speed up the process.

“We couldn’t stay there longer, spend more money and time. We’re not from La Guaira.”

After receiving her son’s ashes, she made the trip home.

“We came home on Wednesday – not the way I wanted, with my son alive – but at least I have his ashes.”

Despite her loss, Nunez is grateful she was able to find Daniel’s body.

“There are people who have not yet found their loved ones. They are still searching.”

CNN has contacted the Venezuelan Ministry of Communications and the Vuelta a la Patria program for comment on Daniel’s case, as well as for additional information about the passengers on board and the protocols followed after the earthquakes. CNN is waiting for a response.

Daniel came to the United States in 2022 after crossing the border from Mexico and beginning the asylum process. But on May 10, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested him while he was on his way home from his construction job.

Nunez says her son has already decided to return to Venezuela.

“Daniel has already decided to return by the end of this year because he said the persecution of migrants has become too severe,” she added.

ICE agents told Daniel his detention was for failing to appear in court after being cited in 2024 for driving without a valid license, according to Nuñez.

“He said, ‘Mom, I paid the fine, but I didn’t know I had to go to court.’” “At the time he was moving apartments, he believed the notice had been sent to his previous address and he never received it,” she said.

Court records reviewed by CNN show that Daniel Nunez has no criminal record in the United States beyond several traffic violations, including driving without a valid license and speeding.

Records also show he appeared in 2026 in a case involving an arrest warrant issued in another county. Available documents indicate that the arrest warrant was related to a traffic case involving his driver’s licence, although the extradition file does not specify its exact source.

Daniel had to wait until June 9 for his court hearing, where the judge dismissed the charge on his driver’s license and imposed a fine for his previous failure to appear in court. However, because his asylum case was still pending, ICE kept him in custody before transferring him to a detention center.

“When he got there, they put great psychological pressure on him to self-deport, and he decided to sign his deportation papers,” Nunez said. “They told him that he would be in Venezuela within five days, but it became 15 days. It is unfortunate that he arrived on the 24th of the same month, the day the earthquakes occurred.”

A US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN that the deportation flight arrived in Venezuela without incident, and that all undocumented foreign nationals on board were returned to their country of origin.

“Once an individual is no longer in ICE custody, the agency is no longer responsible for that person,” the spokesperson added.

Nunez, a lawyer, says her fight is not over yet. She says she will continue to speak out on social media and plans to continue her legal education so she can seek justice for her son’s death.

She calls on the Venezuelan government to be more transparent toward grieving families searching for their loved ones, and to implement safer, more efficient and humane protocols for deported Venezuelans without criminal records. She laments that deportees like her son cannot be released upon their return to the country – they are held at the mercy of bureaucratic processes.

“They’re not bags of potatoes. They’re human beings. They’re delivering human beings,” she said.

“All I ask God is that these deaths do not go unpunished, because my son was not a criminal.”

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