Oswadeliz Núñez had to identify the body of her son Daniel by a tattoo he got when he was 24. There was no other way. The El Santuario hotel, in Macuto, had collapsed on dozens of people like him: deportees who had set foot on Venezuelan soil only hours earlier.
Daniel had spent two years in the United States, with an asylum process underway, when ICE detained him over a traffic fine. On June 24, 2026, he was put on a flight from Miami along with 145 other people. That same afternoon, at 5:25, he called his mother in El Tigre to let her know he was already in Venezuela. Forty minutes later, an earthquake shook the country and the hotel where he was sleeping collapsed.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the flight arrived without incident and that its responsibility ended once he was out of custody. Oswadeliz does not see it that way: she is seeking justice, moral compensation, and assurance that no Venezuelan without a criminal record will ever again end up buried in the country to which they were returned.