ICE deported his brother to El Salvador, so he hid in Texas, then fled back to Venezuela
Jonferson Valera Yamarte, a young Venezuelan immigrant who had made his way to the U.S. last year, hid after he witnessed in March how federal agents arrested his brother and three friends in Dallas before deporting them to a maximum security mega prison in El Salvador.
Now, he is no longer in fear: His family received him with a party at their home in Venezuela.
'It's the first time I've moved away from her, and I think it's going to be the last,' said Yamarte, hugging his mother, Mercedes, just minutes after being greeted with hugs, tears and a rain of celebration foam in the neighborhood of Los Pescadores in Maracaibo, his hometown in northwestern Venezuela.
Yamarte, 21, flew from Mexico to Caracas on Thursday on a plane that was part of the Venezuelan government's official repatriation plan 'Return to the Homeland' and then traveled by land to Maracaibo. He got out of a military vehicle smiling after 7 a.m. on Saturday, before his neighborhood erupted in joy.
Family and friends received him with hugs, claps and tears in their eyes, while they played 'Volver a casa' — Returning Home — a melancholic song that has become the anthem of the Venezuelan migration, which so far numbers close to eight million people.
Dozens of balloons the color of Venezuela's tricolor flag and a 'welcome' sign decorated the facade of his mother's house, where a breakfast of sweet breads and cola drinks awaited him.
Yamarte told the Miami Herald he decided to move immediately and live in hiding somewhere else in Texas after living through the immigration agents went into his apartment, handcuffed his brother Mervin and took him into custody on March 13.
'I left there so that I wouldn't have the same address. They were going to come for me,' he said. 'I worked with fear, I went to play soccer with fear, I walked on the streets with fear, as if I were being chased.'
The young man emigrated from Venezuela in September 2023 and turned himself in to border authorities in El Paso, Texas, after a long land journey in which he had crossed the dangerous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama. His brother had entered the United States first.
In November 2023, Yamarte arrived in Dallas after being detained at the border for a couple of days. He got together with Mervin and several of his friends, also former residents of Los Pescadores, to work 'honestly' in a tortilla factory, he said.
After Donald Trump was elected in November 2024, Yamarte said, he and his brother had decided to return to Venezuela, worried about Trump's comments attacking immigrants during his presidential campaign, he said. But they remained in Texas, he said, thinking that nothing would happen to them. They had papers that allowed them to remain in the U.S., they both thought.
Armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided his apartment in the Texas city of Irving around noon on March 13. Yamarte said he watched as his brother Mervin Yamarte, 29, and friends Andy Perozo, 30, and Ringo Rincon, 39, all from the same Maraciabo neighborhood, were handcuffed and taken away.
Authorities also arrested 23-year-old Edwar Herrera, another former Los Pescadores resident who had immigrated to the U.S. The four were deported on March 16 to the notorious Terrorism Confinment Center in El Salvador, along with more than 200 immigrants accused of belonging to the feared Tren de Aragua gang.
Mervin Yamarte told the ICE officers that day that he had been allowed into the U.S. and that his documentation was up to date.
The officers assured him that they were detaining him 'just for investigation,' Yamarte said.
Federal agents took photographs of the detainees' tattoos: Rincon had an owl and his brother had the number 99, among others. Yamarte said it was his brother's favorite soccer number.
'A tattoo doesn't define you as a person,' he says. Neither he nor his brother had had any problems with the law in the United States, he said.
U.S. authorities summoned Yamarte to appear in immigration court on April 6. That day, he had already crossed into Mexico through El Paso and traveled from Ciudad Juárez to Mexico City.
He thought that having remained free for a few weeks in Texas was 'a sign from God,' he says. 'Sometimes, one is very foolish because of greed and money, thinking that I was going to stay despite what was happening' to other Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S., he added.
But then, when he got the notice to appear in immigration court, he said, he became convinced he would be detained and deported, perhaps to the prison in El Salvador.
'I spoke with my mother and told her that I was not going to be in the United States anymore, that I was not a criminal. Why should they be persecuting me?' he said.
Yamarte said he plans to start working in Venezuela again after spending time with his family. 'I want to keep moving forward,' he added.
He said his brother is innocent and remains hopeful he will be released from the Salvadoran prison and return home to Maracaibo.
His mother says she is happy, in the meantime, because two of her four children who emigrated to the United States are already back living with her Los Pescadores. She hopes Mervin and another of her sons will join them soon.
Said his father, Alirio, who cried as he hugged him, 'You feel joy and sadness at the same time.'
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