What Maduro’s ouster means for Trump’s mass deportation campaign

Samir Luzardo’s life as an asylum seeker in the United States has been in limbo since President Donald Trump took office again last year. He lost the temporary protected status shielding him from deportation in September. And he has watched with growing unease as the administration deports thousands back to the country he’d fled.

Now after Trump ousted Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro on Saturday and declared the U.S. will “run” the South American country temporarily, Luzardo and other Venezuelans are pondering a different scenario: whether things might actually improve enough to return, or deepen the uncertainty around the future of their families.

“Millions of us who fled Venezuela want to return. We’d want to return tomorrow if we could,” said Luzardo, an independent journalist who has been living in South Florida for nearly a decade. “But we know it’ll be a process that is going to take time.”

Trump has made deporting recently arrived Venezuelans a priority in his second administration, and at a news conference Saturday said that many of the nearly 1 million Venezuelan immigrants in the United States “want to go back to their country.” But whether Maduro’s ouster helps or harms Trump’s quest to deport large numbers of Venezuelan migrants is far from certain.

In the short-term, many are unlikely to return while Maduro’s allies remain in power and the nation’s economy in shambles. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will likely need to pause deportations to Venezuela to protect officers while the country remains unstable. Longer-term, some might return if they see genuine change in Venezuela. But if the country descends into deeper calamity, immigration experts warn it could also spark a new exodus. Neighboring Colombia immediately moved to fortify its border with Venezuela after the U.S. military action.

“This could just be the beginning of a round of violence and conflict and turmoil that could result in people not returning - at least not voluntarily - or turning right around and fleeing all over again,” said Bill Frelick, who oversees the migrant and refugee rights division at Human Rights Watch, a New York based nonprofit that investigates abuses worldwide.

Humanitarian crises elsewhere offer clues of what might happen next.

Massive numbers of people fled brutal conflict in Kosovo and political repression in Syria but returned when armed forces withdrew and a regime was toppled, respectively, in hopes of rebuilding their homelands. In countries like Afghanistan and Somalia, however, sudden political and military shifts only created new reasons for people there to flee.

The most obvious parallel to Venezuela so far appeared to be Iraq, Frelick said. Trump’s plan is to send U.S. energy giants to Venezuela and use the wealth generated from reviving the nation’s dismal oil industry to stabilize the country. The U.S. had similar ambitions in Iraq. But the U.S.-led invasion and takeover, and eventual capture of Saddam Hussein, only prompted another exodus.

Political instability, additional military action by the U.S. or a sharp crackdown by Maduro’s allies could lead to “new or different waves of people leaving the country,” Frelick said. That would test a region that has been grappling for years to manage the 8 million people who have already fled. Thus far, things appear to be calm in Venezuela’s capital.

Record numbers of Venezuelans fled to the United States during the Biden administration, part of a global trend fueled by shaky post-covid lockdown economies and the former president’s more lenient border policies. Biden officials granted as many as 600,000 Venezuelans work permits and temporary permission to stay while they applied for legal residency - a move supported by Republicans such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator from Florida.

Trump shielded Venezuelans from deportation at the end of his first term, but during the 2024 campaign he vilified them as national security threats and since January he has made many a target for deportation. He and his Cabinet officials invoked a centuries-old law to expel hundreds to a notorious prison for gang members in El Salvador, and stripped work permits and temporary permission to stay from hundreds of thousands of others.

In canceling those protections, the Trump administration has argued that conditions in Venezuela have sufficiently improved for people to return, though the State Department still advises against any travel there. About 500,000 Venezuelans are currently facing deportation in U.S. immigration courts, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal data.

The ICE Flight Monitor at Human Rights First, a nonprofit that tracks deportations, said approximately 14,310 Venezuelans were deported to their home country from February through December, a major increase from prior years. Biden, who also ramped up deportations in his final year, removed about 3,200 Venezuelans in his last full fiscal year in office.

The Department of Homeland Security has not provided detailed deportation data since Trump took over in January, and officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The agency posted a statement Sunday on social media supporting Maduro’s ouster.

“President Trump is bringing stability to Venezuela and bringing to justice an illegitimate Narco Terrorist dictator who stole from his own people,” a spokesperson wrote, adding that the agency had ended temporary protections for Venezuelans, and “now they can go home to a country that they love.”

John Sandweg, an acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, said Maduro’s capture would likely lead to a “temporary pause” in removals to Venezuela until it becomes clear who is running the country. Maintaining U.S. control in Caracas might enable ICE to increase deportations, he said, but problems could arise “if this drags on and they’re unable to make a return for months.”

In that scenario, the U.S. government could continue to send Venezuelans to “third countries” - a policy it has increasingly been implementing with migrants of many nationalities - or federal courts could start releasing people from ICE custody because the United States is unable to return them to their home country.

While Trump vowed to “run” the nation with the cooperation of Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, she has thus far maintained a defiant stance. On Saturday, she called Maduro’s arrest illegal and demanded his release.

Christian Carías Torres, 33, entered the U.S. in 2023 and was deported to Venezuela about four months ago. He said the country’s ongoing economic collapse made it difficult to earn a living and that he left again weeks later for Colombia, where he worked as a fast-food cook while trying to access his U.S. bank account and retrieve some belongings left behind. He has since moved back to Venezuela to care for his ailing mother.

“Nothing is going to be fixed overnight,” he said.

Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said Venezuelans must weigh multiple factors before deciding to return, including whether they will be able to reestablish themselves after years away.

Unauthorized immigrants or those with precarious status in the United States may want to leave, he said, and affluent Venezuelans might consider returning to invest and rebuild. Still others might take their chances with the U.S. immigration system in hopes that they will qualify for asylum.

“We shouldn’t assume people will rush back because they’re going to want to wait and see if there’s actually opportunity,” he said.

At a South Florida rally Saturday, some Venezuelans like 50-year-old Leomar Nuñez said they have no plans to return. Nuñez came to the United States from Venezuela a decade ago, and her two young children have largely grown up in the area. Like others, she maintains a fierce connection with her homeland, but feels her life is now here.

“I didn’t know whether to cry or shout,” she said. “I had to come to release all of this emotion.”

Others said they want to see certain conditions met before considering abandoning asylum claims in the United States.

Cesar Leal, 61, said he was watching for the release of political prisoners in Venezuela. In the meantime, he was having trouble communicating with relatives in his hometown of Caracas because of power and internet outages.

“There is still a lot of work to do,” said Leal, who came to the U.S. three years ago. “We have to wait until things are stabilized.”

Luzardo, the Venezuelan journalist in Florida, said he views the Trump administration’s actions as the “start for a massive return.” But he cautioned that Trump and his inner circle would be misguided to think Venezuelans are going to return home just because Maduro is out of power. Venezuelans know that “Madurismo isn’t dead just because he’s out of power,” he said.

Luzardo once served on a Venezuelan government agency that regulates telecommunications but said his efforts to fight government censorship made him a target. He decided to flee with his family in 2016 after regime officials began threatening his son. He has been waiting nine years for an asylum interview.

If the Trump administration focuses on helping Venezuela carry out free and fair elections and rebuilding security, many Venezuelans will return home without the need for deportation, he said.

“I’d tell Trump: ‘Stop persecuting us, set the conditions for a return,'” he said, “and there will be full flights of Venezuelans in New York, Miami, Madrid and elsewhere going back.”

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María Luisa Paúl, Arelis R. Hernández and David Ovalle contributed to this report.