Families search for deportees missing after Venezuela hotel collapse

The repatriation flight landed at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas at about 10:22 a.m. local time on June 24, carrying 19 women and 7 children. Families spent days searching hospitals, shelters and morgues after Flight 164's 146 deportees disappeared when the hotel where they were being processed collapsed in Venezuela's twin earthquakes.

The deportees were taken to Hotel Santuario in La Guaira, north of Caracas, where authorities were processing them when two strong earthquakes struck later that day. The first registered about magnitude 7.2, and a larger quake followed about 39 seconds later at roughly magnitude 7.5, from U.S. Geological Survey data. The shocks caused significant damage in several cities, and the U.S. Geological Survey issued red PAGER alerts for both quakes, signaling probable high loss of life and widespread destruction.

The hotel collapse left some deportees trapped in the rubble and others missing as rescue crews pulled survivors from the wreckage. Family members searched across the capital region for relatives, moving between hospitals, shelters and morgues in hopes of finding names, bodies or any sign of life. In at least one case, a family identified a victim by a distinctive pizza tattoo. Another family identified a man who had worked in Miami and had been happy to return home as a victim of the disaster.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not responsible for the deportees when the earthquakes struck, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security determined, even though they had been returned only hours earlier into a region that was about to be hit by the quakes. Venezuelan officials placed the death toll anywhere from the hundreds to more than 1,700 by June 29 and 30.