A South Florida mother says her family was shattered within days after her husband and young son were deported to Venezuela, only for a deadly earthquake to strike hours after their arrival and leave one dead and another seriously injured.
In an exclusive NBC 6 South Florida report, politics reporter Hatzel Vela spoke with Johana Pineda, who said her husband and 7-year-old son were among the Venezuelans removed from the United States on a deportation flight shortly before the earthquake struck.
Pineda said the family had come to the United States in 2022 and had a pending asylum petition when they were detained during what she described as a routine immigration appointment. She told Vela that she had signed paperwork for voluntary departure because she believed the family would have until August to leave.
Instead, she said, her husband and son were deported far sooner.
Hours after the flight arrived in Venezuela, Pineda said, the earthquake struck.
Her husband was trapped inside a room that collapsed during the quake. He was eventually rescued and taken to a hospital, but later died from his injuries, according to Pineda’s account to NBC 6.
Her son survived, but she said the child was badly hurt in the disaster.
A Deportation Flight Before The Earthquake
Vela reported that Pineda’s family was on Flight 164, a deportation flight from the United States carrying Venezuelan nationals back to Venezuela.
Pineda pointed to photographs posted by the Venezuelan government that she said showed the group after their arrival. The Associated Press, cited in Vela’s report, said the flight carried 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children.
For Pineda, the timeline was devastatingly close.
She told NBC 6 that her husband and son had only recently returned to Venezuela when the earthquake struck, turning a forced family separation into a fatal emergency before the family had even had time to adjust to their new circumstances.
The family had reportedly been inside a building with other people when the quake began. Pineda said her husband was in a separate room when it collapsed around him.
He was rescued, but he did not survive.
The account is especially painful because Pineda was still in South Florida while her husband and child were thousands of miles away. She could not reach them during the chaos, help search for them, or be present when her husband was taken to the hospital.
A Young Son Left Injured Far From Home
Pineda told Vela that her 7-year-old son had been in the same facility that was damaged during the earthquake.
The child survived, but his mother described the experience as deeply traumatic. She said he struggled to believe that his father had died.
Through tears, Pineda explained that the family had lost nearly everything in the span of a week.
That sentence carries the weight of the story. Deportation alone can split a household apart, but Pineda’s family was then hit by a disaster that turned the separation into permanent loss.
For a child, the sudden removal from one country, an earthquake, serious injuries, and the death of a parent would be overwhelming under any circumstances. For Pineda, the anguish is compounded by having to process it from afar.
Vela’s report did not detail the full extent of the boy’s injuries, but Pineda’s account made clear that he had been caught in the same collapse that killed his father.
The family’s experience shows how quickly an immigration case can become inseparable from a humanitarian crisis when a deportation flight lands in a country facing instability or disaster.
Another Family Describes A Son’s Severe Injuries
Vela also reported on another Venezuelan family affected by the same deportation flight and earthquake.
The mother of Anderson, a 21-year-old man who was also deported from the United States, said her son was left severely injured after the building collapse. She said he was in a hospital bed on a respirator and had both legs amputated.
“It’s not fair,” she said in the report.
The family said they had received little official information about the people removed on the flight, including no clear public list of names or detailed updates about those who may have been injured in the earthquake.
That lack of information appears to have made an already painful situation worse. Families trying to locate loved ones after a disaster need more than broad reassurances; they need names, hospital information, and a clear sense of what happened.
When people are deported in large groups and then caught in a major emergency shortly after arrival, relatives can be left trying to reconstruct events through news reports, social media images, and scattered phone calls.
The emotional toll of that uncertainty is difficult to overstate.
Questions About What Officials Knew
Pineda told Vela that she thought her family had more time before any departure from the United States would take place.
She said they had signed voluntary departure paperwork and believed they would be allowed to remain until August. But she said the family was detained during an immigration appointment and deported before that expected timeline.
NBC 6 reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
According to Vela, the department did not verify the family’s account or provide details about the reported injuries and death. However, DHS issued a statement saying the deportation flight safely reached Venezuela and that, once a person is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for that individual.
That statement addresses the agency’s position on custody, but it does little to answer the questions Pineda and other families now face.
The issue is not simply whether the flight landed safely. It is what happened to people shortly after they were returned, particularly when some of them were children, families, and people who may have had unresolved legal or humanitarian concerns.
Pineda’s account raises a difficult question about how much responsibility governments have to ensure that deportation decisions account for what may happen immediately after removal, especially when deportees are returned to areas facing unstable conditions.
A Family Left To Grieve Across Borders
Vela’s report did not portray Pineda as making a political speech. She appeared as a mother trying to understand how her family’s life changed so abruptly.
Her husband was dead. Her son was injured. And she remained in the United States, separated from both of them by borders, immigration rules, and the aftermath of a natural disaster.
The story is tragic because every part of it arrived at once.
There was the deportation. Then the earthquake. Then the collapse. Then the hospital. Then the death.
For Pineda, the loss is not only about what happened in Venezuela. It is also about what she believes might have happened differently had her family been allowed to remain together for the time she thought they had.
There may be legal, administrative, and factual questions still unresolved around the family’s immigration status and the circumstances of their deportation. But the human outcome described by Vela is already clear.
A woman in South Florida is mourning her husband while trying to support an injured child far away, after a flight that was supposed to close one chapter of the family’s immigration struggle instead became the beginning of an unimaginable tragedy.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.
