Jorge Erazo made a perilous trek through the jungle, crossed the U.S. border to seek asylum and eventually found work remodeling homes in Florida.
His journey was a familiar one in the Miami area, where thousands of Venezuelans have resettled after fleeing crushing poverty, violence and repression. So was his exit: Immigration officials deported Mr. Erazo, 35, this year amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, his friends and family said on Thursday.
He and his wife and children were among the many missing after two earthquakes rocked Venezuela late on Wednesday, toppling apartment buildings and buckling roads. In South Florida, his friends posted fliers and photos of Mr. Erazo and his family online, clinging to hope that they would resurface unharmed.
“He’s such a hard worker,” said John Mendoza, who hired Mr. Erazo to work at his home remodeling business in Doral, Fla., the heart of South Florida’s Venezuelan community.
Venezuelans across the state were glued to their phones, checking on friends and relatives through WhatsApp and gasping at social media clips of the destruction. Some hurried to Walmart to buy goods like hydrogen peroxide, bandages, bottled water and diapers to donate for relief.
“We’re trying to do what we can from here,” said Alexandra Pueyo, 28, who carried packages of bottled water to the loading docks of Global Empowerment Mission, a nonprofit aid group in Doral. “The sense of impotence and despair is enormous.”
Her relatives survived unscathed. Others were not so fortunate.
Alondra Bechara, 25, a server who lives in Doral, took to Instagram on Thursday to plead for help, saying that her older sister was trapped in a collapsed building in the hard-hit port city of La Guaira, outside Caracas, the capital.
Through tears, she said in a phone interview that eight members of her family had died, and that her sister, Karina Bechara, 47, remained trapped under rubble. After the quakes, Alondra Bechara said she and other members of her family living in the United States “went crazy,” dispatching acquaintances in Venezuela to check on the building. They all told her the same thing: the Mar de Leva apartment building had collapsed.
On Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bechara was getting hourly updates — when the cell service was working — from her sister’s son, who escaped unharmed. Karina Bechara had been asleep in her fifth-floor room, along with her small dogs Chanel and Sasha, when the ground lurched and the building tumbled. Now she was responding to people calling for her outside the building, but she could not move.
By nightfall, Ms. Bechara had better news: Her sister had been rescued, though she was in critical condition. “Doctors in Venezuela are telling us they may have to amputate both of her legs,” Ms. Bechara said in a text message, adding that the family was hoping to get Karina to the United States for specialized care.
Elsewhere in Doral, where about 40 percent of the population traces its roots to Venezuela, friends of Mr. Erazo recounted his journey to South Florida.
A dockworker, he initially fled Venezuela after running afoul of local criminals, said Mr. Mendoza, his friend. He lived for a time in Chile, then crossed the dangerous stretch of jungle in Colombia and Panama en route to the United States.
“He told me he would cry in the jungle,” Mr. Mendoza said.
After entering the United States in early 2021, at a time when tens of thousands of Venezuelans were seeking asylum, Mr. Erazo lived briefly in New York before moving in with Mr. Mendoza and his wife in Doral.
He worked to send money to his wife and young children, who were living in Peru at the time, said Andrea Aguirre, Mr. Mendoza’s wife. Late last year, Mr. Erazo moved to Orlando, Fla., because the cost of living was cheaper than in South Florida. But he was detained by a local police officer outside a Walmart and ultimately deported despite his pending asylum claim and work permit, the couple said.
Mr. Erazo was not wholly disappointed. With the money he’d made working in the United States, Ms. Aguirre said, he bought an apartment in La Guaira and reunited with his wife and children, ages 12 and 6.
It was the apartment that is believed to have collapsed, she said.
Mr. Erazo’s mother, Tania González, said in a phone interview from Venezuela earlier Thursday that she has not been able to visit the building. But cousins on motorbikes drove by and saw it collapsed, she said. Family members were checking hospitals and morgues.
Late Thursday afternoon in Doral, Ms. Aguirre said she had heard from neighbors of Mr. Erazo in Venezuela that he and his family had perished. But underscoring the confusion on the ground, Ms. González said she had not received word from the authorities. “We don’t know if he’s alive or dead,” she said.
