By Todd Bensman as published July 13 by The Daily Signal
AUSTIN, Texas – The close timing of two high-casualty earthquakes in Venezuela on June 24 and a June 25 Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump Administration to deport some 605,000 US-based Venezuelans has given rise to a mounting pressure campaign arguing that President Trump must, on moral grounds, let them stay.
Seizing on one tragic event where some 100 just-deported Venezuelans died in the quakes, pro-illegal immigration activists, human rights groups like the Venezuelan American Caucus, Democratic lawmakers, and mid-term candidates are pushing a narrative that is bleeding into political campaigns as a real issue. The objective is to virtue-shame President Trump into reactivating the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that had shielded Venezuelans from deportation and which the Supreme Court revoked. Their underlying argument goes pretty much like this:
“It is unthinkable to send children and families, who have committed no crimes, into a country plunged into chaos by natural disaster,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who is running for reelection, wrote in a Facebook post.
This voice-cracking cry to save Venezuelans from Earthquake chaos is gaining traction, though the administration has resisted demands to restore TPS. But the argument is an easily debunked false dilemma based on inaccurate premises. The truth is thatmost of the deportable Venezuelans need not be shipped anywhere near the smoking rubble of shaken Caracas.
Most Venezuelans let in after crossing the southern border during Biden’s term were already firmly resettled in 17 foster countries, where more than seven million had lived safely for many years, often legally, even prosperously, and far from any earthquake epicenter, according to planning documents for a sprawling United Nations Commission on Human Rights’ “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan” (RMRP) resettlement program launched in 2017 to address the exodus.
The administration could continue deportation flights to Venezuela because, of course, the earthquakes devastated only parts of the capital and La Guaira State on the coast. But the administration could airlift the 600,000 much faster and in perfectly good conscience to many of those 17 original host governments and even offer the deportees their choice of country. The seven million Venezuelans began their exodus in about 2015, fleeing Venezuela’s economic collapse under the socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil topped the long list and still do, the UN’s RMRP reports. (See the 2026 RMRP document here).
Up to a million departed these kind nations because Joe Biden’s open borders policies offered an irresistible chance at an American lifestyle upgrade, which is not a legally eligible claim for temporary protection. If anything, the omission of last country of long-term residency constitutes fraud.
Ready and Willing Foster Countries Next Door
No one knows how many of the US-based Venezuelans came from which countries. That’s because US Customs and Border Protection tracks aliens by country of citizenship, not last residence, making it easy to omit they’d been safe and sound for years, ineligibly for TPS. Not that anyone ever asked.
We know a substantial majority were firmly resettled, in part, because 99 percent of the many hundreds of Venezuelans I interviewed along the migration trails during those years told me they hadn’t lived in their home country in five, seven, or even 10 years. (See the video U.S. Enabling Mass Asylum and Humanitarian Permit Fraud at the Southern Border). I’m not alone; pro-illegal immigration activists know it too.
A February 2025 Migration Policy Institute paper reported that, while some Venezuelans who crossed did come directly from Venezuela, “many others arrived after prior residence in other Latin American countries.” They were not motivated by reasons that justified TPS. Instead, they came for “the prospects of economic opportunity…in the United States,” the institute reported. Likewise, a Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) 2024 report acknowledged “Some Venezuelans had departed from Venezuela, but many had been living in Colombia or elsewhere in South America but decided to move on.” It’s easy to see why the Venezuelans adopted these countries. Economically robust Ecuador started offering Venezuelans temporary protected status in 2017 while Chile followed suit in 2021 entitling all to benefits and services, Georgetown University’s Journal of International Affairs noted.
The UN RMRP reports bury any notion that Venezuelan settlers faced unbearable danger and persecution in these countries.
In 2026, Brazil was still offering “long-standing regularization pathways” with residency and work permits. Urugay offers “inclusive residency policies with improved access to rights, employment and social protection for Venezuelans and refugees,” the UN organization reported. Colombia, with by far the most Venezuelan settlers (2.8 million), had granted residency to 69 percent, along with work authorization, health care access and education. And was working to give the rest that status this year.
“Government efforts toward regularization of refugees and migrants have advanced” in Peru, the country with the second most Venezuelan settlers (1.6 million) and which last year launched a legalization initiative to get 480,000 more onboarded, the 2026 RMRP plan states. Argentina has opened its arms wide.
In the Caribbean, Aruba offers a new program granting work permits. The Dominican Republic has issued more than 26,000 temporary worker and student permits since 2021. In Guayana, “a humanitarian approach remains in place providing free, renewable stay permits and access to public services.” And on and on, the UN says.
The way forward in narrative and action
In June 2025, the Supreme Court cleared the administration to send illegal aliens to agreeable safe third countries other than their own. Since then, the administration has collected formal agreements with 15 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean with more coming.
The administration and all those who support its deportation goals have facts in pocket to smoke the patently false binary choice being peddled that it can either heartlessly send Venezuelans straight to “hell” or let them remain illegally in the United States. Beyond its opportunity to beat down a fake narrative, the administration possesses the moral and legal authority – and a rich buffet of options it probably didn’t realize it had – to actually speed this large new deportation project.