AFTER ALL WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH

Recounting Venezuelan Asylum Seekers’ Journey to Martha’s Vineyard

THE THOUGHT OF AIDING in a humanitarian crisis for fellow Latinoamericanos on Martha’s Vineyard never crossed my mind when I moved here. It was hard to believe when reading that a group of Venezuelans had been sent to the island. All I could think was: “Almost no one speaks Spanish here; they need legal aid!” and I headed straight to the shelter. After interviewing the victims, the undeniable conclusion was that a fraudulent scheme and deception had occurred.

As we were putting the pieces of the puzzle together, conducting interviews and creating affidavits, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, made a public statement taking credit for the scheme in clear violation of the rights of children, women, and men who were tricked into boarding a plane by fraudulent means. The political nature of such acts opened our eyes to the magnitude of what had just happened. An unlawful and State-sponsored relocation of migrants had taken place.

The man was in shock; he couldn’t believe what had just happened. He kept trying to collect his thoughts. It was hard to explain how he had ended up being brought to Martha’s Vineyard in September 2022. He was told he was getting English lessons, cultural adaptation, a job, housing, food, a stipend, and even help in navigating the asylum-seeking process. When he left the migrant facility in Texas, the thought of starting a new life in Washington or Boston, where they’d be waiting for him, made him feel like it was all worth it, that he had made it. He’d be a fool to reject such an offer. He struggled to manage the wave of emotions while showing the infamous red folder with fake but seemingly “official information” listing the offered benefits, trying to process that it was all a lie, that he was tricked.

Finding proof and identifying the people who tricked them was a must. But making sure of the Venezuelans’ safety while identifying the traffickers was even more important. The instinct was on point, and confirmation arrived a month later when news about the woman they identified as Perla, who lured and transported them into the scheme came out. It was clearly a premeditated scheme, that had been carefully crafted and planned with the counterintelligence experience Perla Huerta gained during her service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For the first time, the quaint community of Martha’s Vineyard got close to one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world. The Venezuelans, forty-nine of the approximately 7.32 million Venezuelan refugees worldwide, had to flee conditions and violence like those experienced in war zones, economic turmoil and serious human rights violations, as well as lack of basic necessities and services like food and water.

It is also hard to believe that the country with the world’s largest oil reserves coexists with the world’s most underfunded humanitarian crisis. Fifty-two years ago, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in the region and one of the twenty richest in the world. Between 1978 and 2001, their economy went sharply in reverse. The richness of its land became its curse, and a petrostate emerged, highly dependent on fossil fuel income, with concentrated power and widespread corruption. This humanitarian crisis has worsened every year and, since 2015, has been the largest humanitarian crisis in Latin American history.

The Venezuelan State has deliberately targeted civilians, inflicting egregious violations of human dignity, as documented in investigations on crimes against humanity. Under these conditions, no warning of dangers will stop people from fleeing their own country, as it no longer guarantees their personal safety. Leaving is their only chance to survive, so they take the risk anyway.

“I feared for my life every day; I wouldn’t even feel safe in my house - afraid that I would suffer an attack from the gang,” he said, covering his eyes as if he wanted to stop remembering, lowering his head as he explained that he decided to flee and leave his two children and his wife behind. He couldn’t just voluntarily leave the Guard; he feared persecution for deserting, the gangs, and food insecurity. “The high-ranking commands live well, while on the ground, you go hungry.”

Fleeing children face the horrors of the journey on one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, the Darién Gap, by foot, attempting to reach the United States. 1 in 5 people crossing are children. 170 have been identified as unaccompanied or separated from their families, sometimes without identification, increasing the risk of statelessness. But so do the many other daunting dangers waiting on the rest of their journey through other countries. One of the results of the lack of safe and legal routes is separation and unnecessary exposure of children to violence and trauma that hinders their development.

“I saw a preschooler crying next to her mom’s corpse. A migrant woman took the kid with her at the Darién Gap - in those conditions, you’re fighting for your own life - and still, she saved the kid and somehow managed to get her out of the jungle in one piece. She safely delivered the toddler at a refugee center near the Costa Rican border, where they tried to identify and reunite her with family.”

As the afternoon arrived, the frenzy of flashing cameras from the press waiting for details was strikingly different from the earlier scene with oblivious tourists enjoying their vacation amidst the non-stop waves of volunteers who kept showing up at St. Andrew’s Church, offering a hand and bringing all sorts of basic needs from clothes to phones and hygienic products.

The five children in the group had transparent plastic school backpacks with coloring books, crayons, and even Play-Doh for entertainment. They were kept separated from the adults and had a child-friendly space for them to play at the improvised shelter. The public has especially condemned the improper use of these children for exploitative political gain. Their parents were tricked into believing their kids would sit in a classroom, like any other child. Instead, the promise of a better future devolved into telling their stories, to ensure that none of them missed their immigration appointments as they were sent further away from their locations and with impossibly tight hearing dates.

“After all we’ve been through… Going through the thickest of the jungle through the Darién Gap and crossing eight countries! Thinking you’re safe once you set foot in the United States, only to be tricked onto a plane with the hopes of finding a job and food, and now to be here because they lied to us?! It’s pure evil to play with people like this. After all, we’ve been through… I left my country because of powerhungry politicians and all the pain they inflict on us, and then to be caught up again in political games…Right when you think you are finally safe. To feel like you made it, after all, I’ve been through… After going through hell and still being here telling the story… To be played dirty by another politician and more political games?!”

Fast forward several months, the political pressure worked, and new policies were quickly set in place. A “new legal pathway for Venezuelans forced to flee” can be seen as an updated version of the deportation policy under former President Trump’s Title 42, with expanding and faster deportations of “undocumented migrants” created to justify “Covid-19 public health concerns.” Under that policy, Venezuelans were not immediately expelled in acknowledgement of the humanitarian crisis and the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries making deportation arrangements difficult.

The “new legal path” requisites make seeking refuge for those on their way or stranded in other Latin-American countries impossible, living in the most precarious conditions on the streets as they pass though and gathering resources to continue the dangerous journey. Now they have lost their right to apply for U.S. asylum legally, and those Venezuelans who seek to enter the U.S. by land are quickly expelled to Mexico.

The new policy states that 24,000 individuals who manage to pass strict tests, usually coming from more privileged economic backgrounds, can request asylum, leaving the most vulnerable with no opportunity to obtain a permit, as they must prove they have fiscal sponsors on U.S. soil and must arrive by plane.

Here’s the catch. Due to security concerns, the U.S, like many other countries, has suspended all flights from Venezuela. This makes it virtually impossible for Venezuelans to arrive by plane, as many neighboring countries require them to have visas to transit their country. This is one of the reasons why Venezuelans opted to enter many countries through more dangerous and less controlled routes, such as the Darién Gap, in the first place.

On top of that, the new path erases the opportunity to seek asylum for those who entered Panamá, México, or the US through irregular means, making it impossible to access their right to seek refuge, because they are in breach of the conditions. In other words, the most vulnerable and economically disadvantaged children and their families no longer have the chance to seek asylum in the US, nor do those who were already on the move.

Forced to stay in transit countries that lack the infrastructure and resources to integrate and facilitate a dignified quality of living, or return to their home country, where they may face persecution and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, they are condemned to a precarious “under the table” life. This scenario worsens for unaccompanied and undocumented child migrants, as intersectional vulnerabilities make them the perfect target for perpetrators seeking to cut expenses by employing them in hazardous jobs. Several cases of this have recently come to light. Children under the age of 18 traveling without their parent or legal guardian are not eligible to seek humanitarian protection; if they make it to a port of entry without a parent or legal guardian, they are transferred to governmental custody at the Department of Health and Human Services, under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.