Alejandro Marcano Santelli fled his home country in 2009 after receiving death threats because of his work for a news outlet that opposed the government of Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela who was captured by the United States and brought to New York on Saturday to face drug charges.
Mr. Santelli, 57, who now lives in Miami, said a feeling of immense joy washed over him when he heard the news of Mr. Maduro’s removal from Venezuela.
More than 15 years ago, he and his family obtained asylum in the U.S. within days and, then, eventually, citizenship. With Mr. Maduro in power, however, Mr. Santelli had not been able to return to Venezuela, as his mother had lost her memory and died. He has not seen his brother in nearly two decades.
Still, he realized that the reaction in the community around him had been much more mixed, as the immigration status of many Venezuelans, a majority of whom have entered the United States in the past decade, has become increasingly tenuous.
“There is pain and happiness, but above all, worry,” Mr. Santelli said.
Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled their troubled country, the largest exodus in Latin America’s modern history and one of the largest crises of forced displacement in the world. As of June 2025, about 1.1 million had come to live in United States, including about 600,000 immigrants who had entered under a humanitarian program known as Temporary Protected Status.
Many Americans did not begin paying attention to the plight of Venezuelans until migration levels reached record heights under the Biden administration. As local and state officials struggled to shelter and assist migrants in major cities and in overcrowded shelters along the southern border, the humanitarian crisis became political red meat for President Trump, who returned to office promising to carry out mass deportations of migrants.
Soon after taking office, Trump administration officials moved to end T.P.S. protection for Venezuelans, a decision the Supreme Court has allowed to stand for now as litigation continues. After the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., the administration halted all asylum petitions and immigration applications filed for immigrants from 19 countries. The affected countries were those whose citizens it had restricted from travel to the United States earlier in the year, including Venezuela.
Trump administration officials have framed the measures as efforts to combat fraud and abuse in the national immigration system and to enhance national security. Immigration lawyers and Venezuelan American leaders have countered that the moves have been tainted with racial animus and sought to falsely cast a broad swath of the Venezuelan diaspora as criminals and terrorists.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump repeated familiar talking points, conflating immigration with crime and drug trafficking, as he denounced gangs and criminal organizations that he said had inflicted crime and terror in American cities.
“As I’ve said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives,” Mr. Trump said. At the same time, he added, among the most significant beneficiaries of the U.S. operation would be those who “got thrown out of Venezuela that are now in the United States.”
“Some want to stay, and some probably want to go back,” he said.
Adelys Ferro, a founder of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, a grass-roots group representing Venezuelan interests in the United States, said that, as some Venezuelans were taking to the streets to celebrate, some others were staying inside, worried about immigration raids.
Despite entering the country under humanitarian programs once considered safe and legal, their lives have been thrust into uncertainty, Ms. Ferro said.
“We are victims of the Nicolás Maduro regime, but we are also victims of the Trump administration policies,” she said.
In a statement on Saturday, Eileen Higgins, the newly elected mayor of Miami, called on the Trump administration to reinstate the T.P.S. program, describing the decision to end it as “dangerous, reckless and wrong.”
Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the future of the program or the criticism from officials and Venezuelan American leaders over the decision to end it.
Legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind the T.P.S. program have been led by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a lawyer with the center, said the instability in Venezuela underscored why T.P.S. holders should be allowed to remain in the United States.
Declarations entered in the case say that Venezuelan T.P.S. holders pay taxes and contribute to Social Security, and that they tend to hold jobs and to obtain higher education at greater rates than the broader American population.
In Manhattan, José, a cook from Venezuela, said that he had applied for asylum and T.P.S. as soon as he arrived in the United States in 2022. His T.P.S. has expired, and his asylum case has been pending in bogged-down immigration courts.
Since his last hearing in December, he has had to wear an ankle monitor.
On Saturday, he said he was feeling overjoyed that Mr. Maduro had been toppled, but that he was concerned about what would come next in Venezuela. Mr. Maduro’s reign, for Venezuelans inside and outside the country, elicits memories of food shortages, poor public services and economic decline.
“We still don’t know what is going to happen,” said José, who asked that only his first name be used for fear of retaliation from immigration authorities. “I want to wait it out here.”
At a cafe in Queens on Saturday, Rose Ramírez, 28, of Guárico, Venezuela, said she had been experiencing indescribable emotions since videos of the bombing in her native country began circulating overnight.
“If I had to choose one word to describe this moment, I would say it’s one of great joy and hope that we will have a more prosperous country,” said Ms. Ramírez, while caring for her 4-month-old son, who was in a stroller.
But Ms. Ramírez, who arrived in New York a little over a year ago and was still seeking asylum, also said a new period of uncertainty was now beginning.
“I think we will continue to be in limbo,” she said. “I would like to think that there will now be better cooperation and a better understanding of our legal situation here, but the truth is that it will take time for order to be restored.”
Raúl Vilchis contributed reporting.
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
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