‘Returning is not an option’: Trump’s immigration pressure increases anguish of Venezuelan migrants caught in an economic storm

A feeling of precariousness and fear has gripped Venezuelan migrants. Countries that once welcomed them, like the United States, are now doing everything possible to send them back home, where signs of a new economic crisis are mounting. Conditions in the oil-producing country are deteriorating, as reflected in rising prices, currency devaluation, and a contraction in consumption, leaving Venezuelans with few options.

“It’s a bad time to be Venezuelan in the United States… and also to be Venezuelan in Venezuela,” says Elizabeth, who has lived in Miami since October 2023 under the humanitarian parole program, which was rescinded by the Donald Trump administration on June 12. That decision turned 532,000 beneficiaries from four countries (it also affects Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans) into illegal aliens. “It’s such a harsh feeling of being orphaned,” adds Elizabeth, who requested anonymity because her last hope of staying in the country and keeping her job as a data analyst is a pending asylum application. She acknowledges that if she doesn’t receive a positive response within two weeks, the latest deadline imposed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), she will have to leave the United States. But she rules out returning to Venezuela: “It’s not an option; everything is worse there.”

The end of humanitarian parole is the latest in a string of restrictions against migrants by the Republican administration. Citing rising crime, the president ordered the end of the program, which some 117,000 Venezuelans had signed up to and which allowed them to live and work in the country legally and temporarily, thanks to the invitation of a sponsor or guarantor.

A perfect storm

Many U.S.-based Venezuelans, traditionally leaning toward the right, are seeing these measures as a blow, fearing what awaits them back home if they are deported. The Nicolás Maduro administration’s sensitivity to bad economic news is also increasing. So far in June, it has ordered the arrest of Rodrigo Cabezas, a former finance minister during the Hugo Chávez era, two prominent economists, and some 20 other people accused of inflating the price of the dollar on the parallel market, whose quotes are published daily online. The official price of the bolivar has suffered a year-on-year devaluation of 64% through June, while the gap between the dollar quote on the authorized and unofficial markets is widening, adding pressure to a dollarized economy dependent on imported goods.

The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has not published inflation figures since October 2024, when inflation began to rise. The organization, which stopped reporting negative indicators during the hyperinflationary period of 2018 and 2019, reported in May that the economy grew by 9.32% in the first quarter. However, the private group Venezuelan Finance Observatory reported an annualized price increase of 229% through May, suggesting that Venezuela will close the year with triple-digit inflation, one of the highest in the world, due to a negative combination of internal and external factors. It also forecasts a year-end economic contraction of 3.5%. U.S. sanctions, which precipitated the end of operations by foreign oil companies, including Chevron, have reduced the economy’s sources of income, demanding monetary and fiscal policy corrections that the central government has failed to implement. The U.S. oil company alone was responsible for 25% of the country’s crude oil production.

“Venezuela looked much better at the beginning of the year, with a much better macroeconomic performance than what we are seeing now,” explains José Manuel Puentes, an economist and professor at IESA in Caracas and associate professor at the IE business school in Madrid.

“Chevron is technically 100% gone. It retains some rights to maintain its equipment and fields, but it will no longer be able to export oil to the markets it used to, and that worsens Venezuela’s situation. All the factors for a perfect storm have occurred,” he added.

Penalization of migrants

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports that it has expelled approximately 4,600 Venezuelans so far in 2025.

There are 7.7 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees worldwide, according to figures from the United Nations International Organization for Migration. Of these, 6.6 million reside in Latin America and the Caribbean, where, like many other migrant populations, they have also suffered difficulties in integrating into the workforce and society. For example, a scientific study recently published in the Journal of Public Economics found, through an experiment with human resources recruiters in Ecuador, that Venezuelan migrants received worse job offers and lower salaries when they were competing with local candidates, despite sharing cultural and linguistic characteristics and possessing higher educational levels. This bias was most evident in positions that required greater local knowledge or interactions with the public.

One of the authors of this study also conducted an experiment in the mortgage market in Colombia, where an estimated 2.9 million Venezuelans live — making it the largest community outside their own country. They also found evidence that real estate agents were less inclined to rent properties to Venezuelans than to other nationalities.

Elizabeth is considering self-deportation to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, if her plans for Florida ultimately don’t materialize — a fairly likely scenario at this point — because she knows that having spent less than two years in the United States, she could be subject to expedited deportation, a process that allows authorities to expel foreigners without a full hearing before a judge. She says the important thing is to avoid a violent and disorderly process that would harm her and her husband, who had also managed to integrate into the labor market.

“The asylum request — it seems — protects you from deportation, but the truth is we’re anonymous, unless there’s a precedent or a legal process, but we can’t use the few savings we have on lawyers. It’s a huge uncertainty: it’s terror as state policy. I’d rather retire with the poker chips I have left. We’re Venezuelans: there’s little time to grieve.”

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