This photo shows Alex on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. He took it after a successful court hearing, when his temporary residence was approved (2024) | Photograph courtesy of Alex / Rights reserved
Alex was trembling when he entered the café. He had agreed to participate in my research on Venezuelan immigration in New York and we had decided to discuss his story over coffee. But as he walked down the street to meet me, an ICE van had pulled over and parked alongside him. Even though his documents were in order, he felt a chill at the thought of being deported back to Venezuela. It took him a moment to calm down before he was able to order a coffee and begin sharing the story of his migration to the United States.
This photo shows Alex on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. He took it after a successful court hearing, where his temporary residence was approved. (2024) | Photograph courtesy of Alex. Rights reserved.
Trump’s promise of mass deportations has instilled deep fear among Venezuelans, especially those who, like Alex, walked through the Darién jungle to reach the United States and applied for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The fear Alex felt in front of that ICE truck is far from atypical.
Seeing no prospects for a future in Venezuela, Alex had left the country as soon as he finished high school, in 2019. He migrated to Ecuador, where he began working as a street food vendor. However, the country’s economic situation, especially after COVID-19, became so difficult that Alex turned to what he describes as his last resort for survival: sex work.
The approval of TPS for Venezuelans in March 2021 coincided with the stagnation of post-COVID economies in Latin America and the exacerbation of anti-Venezuelan sentiments in the region; they were accused of taking jobs from the locals and being involved in criminal activities. As travel restrictions were lifted, Venezuelans like Alex saw an opportunity and embarked on the arduous overland journey to the US. Outside of seeking asylum, it was the first time low-income Venezuelans had been offered a legal pathway to enter the United States.
Migrating greatly expanded Alex’s work opportunities. He told me he is happy with his job on the cleaning staff of a private establishment in the Bronx. But this relative stability is not security; Alex, who is now 26, told me that having to return to sex work is one of his greatest fears.
Now the relatively happy ending immigrants like Alex seemed set to attain has been pulled from under them. With the current uncertainties around TPS revocation and facing the threat of forced removal, many Venezuelans are considering self-deportation. This threat is grave enough that Alex is considering leaving the United States for Spain, where a friend has offered him a job in a brothel.
Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign aroused hostility toward Venezuelans by claiming that thousands of criminals were invading the country by crossing the southern border—a narrative that had already worked for Trump in the 2016 election, when Mexican migrants were his target of choice. Low-income Venezuelans became the new “bad hombres” of his campaign, which significantly hindered their chances of integration, as employers and landlords were unwilling to take a chance on them. Some Venezuelans in New York shelters told me that they felt discriminated against and desperate. They worried they would not be able to get a job or rent an apartment, even though they had work permits and authorization to stay in the country.
One of the most salient aspects of this political climate is that lower-class Venezuelans like Alex are not only perceived as a threat by Trump’s white supporters but also by other Venezuelans living in the United States. Many middle-class Venezuelans I interviewed in Miami support Trump’s anti-immigration policies. They view their poorer co-nationals as dangerous invaders from the barrios, Venezuela’s peripheral shantytowns.
Lower-class Venezuelans feel betrayed by those wealthier Venezuelans who immigrated to the United States years ago, having been able to prove the economic stability required to receive visas; these immigrants had been able to tap into a welcoming network in South Florida upon their arrival. Starting around 2015, those Venezuelans with the least resources were also forced to emigrate to escape the country’s burgeoning crisis, and they did so with much less money than their middle- and upper-class co-nationals. This inequality translated into unequal mobility. The lower class migrated wherever their resources allowed. They walked to other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile.
Many of the wealthier Venezuelans who flew to the US a generation earlier claim to be political exiles, a narrative that has the effect of legitimizing their presence in the United States and their right to build a future here. They characterize their poorer co-nationals, by contrast, as supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s destruction. By this reasoning, they do not accept the poor as legitimate political refugees. Some even go so far as to blame them for tarnishing the reputation of the Venezuelan community in the United States. This is largely due to the disproportionate amplification of news about crimes committed by Tren de Aragua, the criminal organization associated with poor Venezuelans.
Some other Latino communities also reject Venezuelans and refuse to help them integrate. Their perception of Venezuelans as violent criminals is encouraged by the administration: Trump has repeatedly accused the Maduro regime of offloading the populace of its jails and mental institutions onto the United States, as Fidel Castro did with the Mariel Boatlift in 1980—a narrative that ignores that many of those portrayed as criminals were actually fleeing repression. This negative reputation exacerbates a sense among Latinos of unfair treatment by the US government. Thanks to Temporary Protected Status, Venezuelans can access benefits that other communities don’t automatically receive, including employment authorization and shelter and food in cities like New York. Such advantages create a sense of injustice among other migrant groups.
I have spoken with members of immigrant aid organizations in New York who say they only work with “older” immigrant groups because “the new ones don’t need help.” Though history has shown that migrants often adopt racist attitudes to assimilate as “true” Americans, this discrimination is also driven by the fear of being excluded in a society that already marginalizes immigrants and distinguishes between deserving and undeserving, good and bad immigrants.
As President Trump doubles down on anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, those Venezuelans with the fewest resources find themselves at the center of a national debate—and they are paying a high price. Alex, for one, feels tired and alone. Confronted by the chilling idea of being deported from a country in which he is a legal resident, he’s once again forced to consider embarking on yet another uncertain journey.
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