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Oswaderiz Nunez remembers getting into an argument with her son, Daniel, who decided to get a tattoo when he was 24. Nearly four years later, the tattoo helped identify Daniel’s body after he died in the twin earthquakes that devastated Venezuela last month.
Daniel had returned to Venezuela on the day of the disaster after being deported from the United States. From La Guaira, he called his mother from the phone of a Venezuelan intelligence agency (SEBIN) official and informed her that he was in the country.
“He said to me, ‘No, mom, we are with SEBIN officials,'” Nuñez told CNN. He told her that he and the other deportees would eat, undergo medical examinations and spend the night in a hotel in Macuto, La Guaira state, while administrative procedures for repatriation were completed. The next day, he made the nearly seven-hour journey to the town of El Tigre to be reunited with his mother.
That reunion never happened. About 40 minutes after his last call to his mother, the ground shook and the hotel he was in collapsed, leaving many residents trapped under the rubble.
It is not yet clear how many of Daniel’s fellow deportees were killed along with him that day, but unconfirmed reports suggest that perhaps as many as 12 were killed.
Nationwide, the disaster killed thousands of people and forced thousands more to evacuate.
The deportation flight carrying Daniel left Miami and landed at Venezuela’s Simón Bolivar International Airport at 10:22 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the same day the earthquake struck. There were 146 people on board, including 120 men, 19 women and seven children, according to figures released by Venezuelan authorities and ICE Flight Monitor, a Human Rights First project that tracks deportation flights.
Also on Wednesday, Venezuela’s Vuelta a la Patria (“Return to the Motherland”) mission announced the arrival of Flight 164, saying the passengers were received at Simón Bolívar International Airport “with dignity” and following “all necessary procedures” to ensure “a happy reunion in our country.”
However, the reunion did not last long.
After the earthquake, Nuñez tried to contact authorities, but was unable to obtain any useful information. She then took matters into her own hands by heading to La Guaira and working with a team of friends and relatives to locate Daniel’s hospitals, clinics and morgues.
“We slept two to three hours at a time and continued searching. We went to the hospital on the eighth, ninth and 10th floor, climbed every floor and inspected room by room,” she said.
The search continued until Monday, when Nuñez returned to the scene of the disaster, convinced that her son had not survived and that his body was still under the rubble.
Authorities eventually directed her to a port facility that had been turned into an emergency morgue after countless bodies were exhumed from the rubble in the days after the earthquake.
“When we went to retrieve my son’s body, there was complete chaos,” Nunez said. “The body was lying on the floor.”
Nunez finally found a body that matched the number he had been given. It was her son, but not the face she remembered.
“Daniel’s face was completely shattered and you could see his bones,” she said. Nunez’s nephew went to wipe Daniel’s left arm, which was still intact.
“We saw his tattoos,” Nunez said. “I argued with him when he got that tattoo. But now I thank God he got it because that’s how I actually recognized him.”
Then came the bureaucratic hurdles she had to overcome while the grief was still fresh and excruciating.
“They said cremation and burial would be free, but we would have to wait anywhere from 10 to 30 days,” Nuñez said. Unable to wait a month, she ended up paying $680 to a private crematorium to speed up the process.
“We couldn’t afford to spend any more money and time staying there. We’re not from La Guaira.”
After receiving her son’s ashes, she returned home.
“We got home on Wednesday, and my son was alive, not in the way I had hoped, but at least I have his ashes.”
Despite the loss, Nuñez is grateful to have found Daniel’s body.
“There are people who still haven’t found their loved ones. They’re still looking.”
CNN has contacted Venezuela’s Ministry of Communications and the Vuelta a la Patria program for comment on Daniel’s case, as well as additional information about the passengers on the plane and the post-earthquake procedures. CNN is waiting for a response.
Daniel crossed the border from Mexico to the United States in 2022 and began the asylum process. But on May 10, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained him as he was returning home from a construction job.
Nuñez said her son had already decided to return to Venezuela.
“Daniel had already decided to return home by the end of this year because he said that the persecution of migrants was becoming very intense,” she said.
Nuñez said ICE agents told him Daniel was detained for failing to appear in court for a 2024 charge of driving without a valid license.
“He said to me, ‘Mom, I paid the fine, but I didn’t know I had to go to court.'” At the time, he was moving out of his apartment and believes the notice was sent to his old address but he never received it, she said.
Daniel Nunez had no criminal history in the United States other than a few traffic violations, including driving without a license and speeding, according to court records reviewed by CNN.
Records also show he appeared in a case involving an arrest warrant issued in another county in 2026. Available documents indicate the warrant was related to a traffic case involving his driver’s license, but the extradition file does not specify its exact source.
Daniel had to wait until a court hearing on June 9, when the judge dismissed the driver’s license-related charges and fined him for missing a previous court appearance. However, because his asylum case was still pending, ICE detained him before transferring him to a detention center.
“When he got there, they put a lot of psychological pressure on him to deport himself and he decided to sign the deportation papers,” Nuñez said. “They told him he would be in Venezuela within five days, but it turned out to be the 15th. Tragically, he arrived on the 24th, the day the earthquake happened.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told CNN that the deportation flight arrived in Venezuela without incident and all illegal aliens on board were returned to their countries of origin.
The spokesperson added, “Once an individual is removed from ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for that individual.”
Nuñez, a lawyer herself, says her fight is far from over. She said she plans to continue speaking out on social media and further her legal education so she can pursue justice for her son’s death.
She is calling on the Venezuelan government to be more transparent with grieving families searching for loved ones and to implement a safer, more efficient and humane process for Venezuelan deportees with no criminal record. She laments that deportees like her son are not released immediately after returning home and are left at the mercy of bureaucratic procedures.
“They’re not sacks of potatoes. They’re human beings. They’re handing over human beings,” she said.
“All I ask to God is that these deaths do not go unpunished because my son was not a criminal.”
